"Do you consider the town square a centre of inspiration for mass shootings"
Before the internet, yes, definitely. Maybe not mass shootings specifically because that seems to be a recent fashion trend after Columbine,
but violent extremism in general. How do you think Hitler managed to secure over 40 percent of the democratic vote in the early 1930s? How did Osama Bin Laden recruit extremists who were willing to put a bomb into the WTC basement? Propaganda, speech.
This idea that unfettered speech in the public town square, even if it isn't directly inciting violence, can't lead to pathological outcomes just doesn't hold up.
This isn't even an argument for government censorship. It's merely me recognizing that these type of outcomes can come about.
Nowadays almost all extremist speech is online, because that's where there is distribution and anonymity, so the analogy breaks down.
"where they are exposed to the general ideas of the community rather than an echo chamber"
This isn't a bad argument, but you have to balance it off with the knowledge that ideas are highly, highly contagious. On balance, I think giving such ideas distribution to a billion eyes is far more harmful than pushing a fringe into echo chambers which already existed before social media censorship began anyway (such as the Stormfront forum).
Moreover you have to recognize that these isolated echo chambers would naturally self-segregate on Reddit if given free reign, and so in practice you haven't changed anything aside from giving these ideas more distribution. It's not like /r/88 or whatever would be interacting with the rest of Reddit thus helping their members deradicalize.
This idea that unfettered speech in the public town square, even if it isn't directly inciting violence, can't lead to pathological outcomes just doesn't hold up.
This isn't even an argument for government censorship. It's merely me recognizing that these type of outcomes can come about.
Nowadays almost all extremist speech is online, because that's where there is distribution and anonymity, so the analogy breaks down.
This isn't a bad argument, but you have to balance it off with the knowledge that ideas are highly, highly contagious. On balance, I think giving such ideas distribution to a billion eyes is far more harmful than pushing a fringe into echo chambers which already existed before social media censorship began anyway (such as the Stormfront forum).Moreover you have to recognize that these isolated echo chambers would naturally self-segregate on Reddit if given free reign, and so in practice you haven't changed anything aside from giving these ideas more distribution. It's not like /r/88 or whatever would be interacting with the rest of Reddit thus helping their members deradicalize.