Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Quote of the Day: Pro-Free Speech
Any online community that is explicitly pro-free speech will inevitably become right-leaning. This is because in the free market of ideas right-leaning ideas win. Which is why we see these left-wing tech companies censoring. No one is buying their progressive, globalist [REDACTED] anymore, so it must be force-fed down the throats of users and dissent must be stamped out with the iron fist of censorship.” — Gab CEO Andrew Torba
If you think about it, it makes sense. Ricochet is an example. We have had progressives and liberals join Ricochet to convert the heathen conservatives t0 their political bent instead staying and becoming right-leaning. Because the center-right arguments convinced them. In a free marketplace of ideas, the better arguments win.
It also explains why so much of the left went hair-on-fire when Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X — a free-speech bastion. Without censorship, their ideas lose, and Twitter/X was a big stick in the social media world. Good ideas trump bad ideas.
It also explains why the current administration is so hard over on active censorship. Unless they control the narrative — all of it — the reality of Bidenomics and the results of the wretched policies of this administration are as bare as the emperor wearing his new clothes. That simply cannot be allowed.
Published in Group Writing
There should be no censorship of ideas.
I am, however, more and more agnostic when it comes to the censorship of mediums.
e.g. I am less and less convinced over time that banning the manufacture and sale of televisions entirely (including for governments) wouldn’t have been a bad idea.
Know of any examples?
I think that what Torba says makes more sense due to filtration, not conversion. Any enterprise dedicated to free speech will become right-leaning because the lefties far more than the righties will feel out of place. Righties are used to having zero support and in fact active suppression from above, while lefties are used to being coddled where anybody who makes them think can be removed for cause.
This mechanism will produce the observed result by netizens voting with their feet, without a single mind being changed anywhere.
Tend to agree here
That presumes a level of intelligence that doesn’t seem sufficiently common these days.
No, it doesn’t. Intelligence has little to do with it.
Stupid people are more likely to believe “Free Stuff!” than “A rising tide raises all boats.” Especially if they’re already envious of the less-stupid people.
We do have GrannyDude as an example, but for the most part I agree with you.
Cell phones are destroying the minds of young people and probably society itself. It’s just a thing, a block of electronics in the hand. But it’s both being abused and is deliberately abusive.
@grannydude, and probably @caroljoy.
I don’t know about Carol leaving. Some people claim they can’t afford to leave the People’s Republic of California, which makes no sense to me. But I suppose it’s different for renters.
I’m indicating that minds have been changed.
Intelligence scares the ‘minds full of mush’. It requires thinking for oneself, independent of the hive mind, and so is frightening. Easier to sink into the swill of thinking like ‘everyone else’, closing their minds to the fact that not everyone thinks like them.
While remembering that they’re being good for thinking almost the right things–the things the right people think, those wonderful Ivy League profs.