New Twitter Version 2.0

Twitter gives everyone a voice. It’s the wild west, entertaining at best and toxic at its worst. It has mobilized groups like me too and black lives matter and most recently the Iranian revolution and the war in Ukraine. It is a lazy form of activism. Twitter is not a place for a healthy debate. It is a noisy confused state where context goes to die. It never takes more than a minute or two to find something to be annoyed at and yet I’m compelled to return to the chaos and engage in some bickering with strangers online. As a free speech advocate, I applaud Elon Musk wholeheartedly for buying Twitter. Twitter employees were notoriously shadow banning and censoring one political side. These moral arbiters of truth were using the platform to push their own agenda and they got caught multiple times. Elon Musk saw what was happening and vowed to make it a more level playing field. As the famous philosopher Voltaire once said, “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Censorship is a slippery slope. The civil rights movement, gay rights and the feminist movement would not have happened if we did not have freedom of speech. It is a fundamental right, written in our constitutions and it must be protected. When Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriquez first tabled Bill C-11, the Trudeau government's online censorship bill, the primary rationale he gave for crafting the legislation was to promote the interests of Canadian content creators. Some critics of this bill say that it’s the beginning of the end of free speech in Canada. That they want to control what we say, what we see and in what language. It wasn’t passed by the Senate, thank God, but you can see a concerted effort to suppress this value in our democracy. This may not concern you right now, but one day it will be your voice they try to silence. As Benjamin Franklin was quoted, “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation, must begin by subduing freeness of speech.” The anonymous nature of Twitter brings out the worst in people. You would never say half the things you do on twitter directly to someone’s face. People are nasty but underneath anger there is frustration and pain. If we’re alive we can get better. We don’t have to take away Canadians rights to do this. Nor should we listen when people tell us our views are not okay. Am I the only one?