Over the last few months notable Silicon Valley influencers have written op-eds about how the internet backfired on them. During the early stages the thought was everyone has a voice so the good will overcome any evil and the volume of good will win. All bad things in the world including racism, injustice, inequality, and hate would be reduced. The information highway to peace and understanding is a reality. In their minds it did not happen. Instead they argue the fringe voices are the loudest and causing too much influence. They created a monster that dummy humans are using to hate each other. The election proved minds could be changed with fake news. As one writer says in the link below the lack of censorship tools has had “catastrophic results for our democracy”. Which is a ridiculous statement. We have endured a few months of a President that isn’t doing so well. Hardly catastrophic. Maybe this guy should be censored for using language to incite and scare the public. America is a catastrophe!

Link to How Twitter Killed the First Amendment
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/opinion/twitter-first-amendment.html

Link to The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/opinion/cloudflare-daily-stormer-charlottesville.html

Link to Our Minds are Being Hijacked
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia

People talking this way have a hole in their understanding of free speech. In my opinion. All that occurred with the internet is the social media explosion. Which is slightly over 10 years old. Which is still new in human dummy dog years. Americans are simply learning to use this tool effectively. Yes, Twitter and Facebook are loud and divisive somewhat. But in just one year all Americans have been taught good lessons. Factions and governments create propaganda to manipulate us. Nonsense is ubiquitous and spread over the inter-webs constantly. The haters on each fringe represent only a small portion of the population. You need to find and filter facts from the noise. Currently and without censorship, the free press and free speech internet are working on your problem. Future elections won’t be won or lost with internet lies and deception! I don’t believe this election was changed by fake news or collusion. Just getting that in here. James Comey maybe but not online garbage and hate. When you get a new toy or tool there is a learning curve. America and its splendid first amendment combined with internet hotness took some learning by our free and uninformed population.

The real essence of America’s free speech law is summed up in the following sentence.

You aren’t protecting any speech envisioned or used today, rather you are protecting the speech you may need in a future state of society that is not free.

To achieve this, you can’t put a lid on ANY speech now. You organize and act against issues and speech you find offensive in a positive way. But you can’t restrict or try to wash away the viewpoints or language you don’t like. You might unknowingly sabotage your ability to create change and organize against something in 10 years. Something that you have no way of predicting or preparing for. Something unforeseen. That is the true purpose of the first amendment. That is why the fore fathers made it number one and guns two.

To close I have a warm and optimistic message for Silicon Valley and the progressives talking censorship to achieve global bliss. Don’t feel guilty. You created something very useful! Something that is the very essence of the free speech law. There always have been, and always will be, groups that lie and manipulate. Unfortunately, there will always be violence. The republic has survived without your censorship based in superior intellect. If someone believes Hillary Clinton ran a child sex enterprise out of a pizza shop they are an idiot. If you believed a Mexican wall would be built, or that coal was coming back, or that immigrants took all the good jobs, then you are dope. It is not your fault. Russian interference and foreign propaganda has always been a tool. But average joes never had a TV spell it out to them after the extra point, or written on the bottom of a pint glass during this last 70 years of American prosperity. The era of Americans believing everything fed to them on the internet is over. This is simply free speech growing pains in the age of the internet. The chaos you fear has already peaked. You aren’t bigger than free speech. It is arrogant to think so. Believe in people and in America. In America all censorship is bad. If the internet and free speech had potential “catastrophic results for our democracy” it would be over already. We are over the hump now. On the other hand, Silicon Valley may want to ponder possible negative outcomes of censorship.

I can easily imagine some light censorship rules combining with Artificial Intelligence to create outcomes engineers didn’t intend and don’t understand.

So, leave the first amendment alone before you do something that hurts the people’s ability to speak and resist in 20 years.