1329 Virtual Town Square

Whether it’s good for the country or not, the social media app, Twitter, has become the virtual town square. Unfortunately, at first Twitter had a hard Left bias and censored opposition voices, including the former president of the United States, which distorted civic dialog and sowed civil discontent rather than alleviating it. There are laws that should have prevented Twitter from that kind of distortion but they were not enforced for political reasons. Free Speech got the reputation it has because until now, America has been able to maintain a dialog among widely disparate ideologies. Collectivism, the antithesis of liberty, was mostly held at bay because the arguments against it was so overwhelming. However, when those debates were censored, the natural attractiveness of altruistic ideas was not counteracted by facts and history. Elon Musk recognized Twitter is too important to society to be promoting a one-sided agenda and changed it to neutral, but how long will that last? Twitter can remain privately owned, as can all the social media platforms, if their protected 230 status was simply revoked. This would make them susceptible to lawsuits and prosecution for any editorializing or censorship they do, hopefully dampening their censorious proclivities.