Tessa Lena a.k.a. Tessa Fights Robots  ❤️

Thread warning. So there is a letter (still considered a controversy ) that calls for, essentially, letting people voice what they think and express their views—regardless of the majority consensus any given moment—without the risk of being fired. 1/

Of course that letter is driven by people inciting hate mobs, people pushing others out of their job for their opinions, people who have and continue to have a platform. People who'd just like their words accepted unquestioningly.

People who are perfectly fine questioning other people's right to existence. But sure, add more thinkface emoji. It's a total surprise why that's controversial.

And it's not "a separate problem" - the weaponization of the "free speech" debate is exactly the problem we're having. Bad faith dialog is worthless, and this is deliberately bad faith.

I disagree with you. Both of us feel passionate about our respective viewpoints, and it's a good thing. I respect your feeling as much as I respect mine. I'm coming from a place of growing up where the ideology of controlling reality by controlling speech has temporarily won.

We're heading towards the same place because we blindly engage with bad-faith dialogue, and we give it huge platforms. The aim of bad-faith dialogue around free speech is to destroy free speech, and dictatorships around the world have shown time and again the approach works.

I am not sure what you mean by bad-faith dialogue. For instance, I would sign that letter in a second if someone asked me, and it's in good faith. For context, I've never had a large platform I would afraid to lose. But we have a lot of collective trauma and need to heal it.

It's not your faith. It's the originators of a letter. There is no good faith interest in freedom of speech. The goal was to stir a controversy, and cleave off some people who would be appalled by their hate speech if they knew, but who've now cosigned.