What a subreddit for tea lovers can teach us about online speech
Even the least contentious online spaces require moderation
In much the same way that a virus will mutate over time to increase its immunity against various treatments, so too do bad internet arguments.
Realizing how quickly the “big tech censorship” narrative crumbles under scrutiny, some defenders of Donald Trump and the “anything goes” social media app Parler have refined their case. Sure, they say, it’s not technically a First Amendment issue. The government isn’t trying to censor anybody (in fact it’s the head of government being booted in this instance). But it’s still a free speech issue, insofar as letting these big companies set and enforce their own rules is a slippery slope. If these bigwigs can just block or delate content, or remove users who directly threaten public health and safety, what’s to stop them from simply deleting everything and de-platforming every person that they happen to find objectionable? Surely, this will have a chilling effect on civil discourse. In a free society, shouldn’t we rely on open debate to establish truth, rather than silencing the opposition?
Putting aside the strained logic of this argument (and slippery slope arguments in general), there is something worth examining here. When groups of people set rules that limit the scope of what is and isn’t appropriate to talk about in certain settings, are they actually stifling free speech, or are they creating an environment where an open discourse can actually happen? More broadly, is “freedom” what exists in the absence of any rules or regulations, or is the rule of law precisely what allows free speech and open discourse to occur in the first place? To explore this further, let’s talk about tea.
The contentious nature of tea and the inevitability of online shitshows
If you take a quick glance at the subreddit r/tea, it looks about as chill and mellow as you might expect an online forum for tea enthusiasts to be. This mellowness, however, didn’t occur through spontaneous order. Like many subreddits, peace and tranquility are maintained on this forum thanks to a group of moderators and a strict list of rules. Among those rules is one discouraging members from debating the health benefits of tea, and making clear that, “Unsupported and/or sensational claims of health benefits will be removed,” as will, “Sensational claims of negative effects of tea.”
That’s right, a subreddit devoted entirely to tea actively limits debate over the health benefits of tea drinking. Evidently, the r/tea community was getting tired of rampant misinformation leading to heated arguments, and decided they no longer wanted it on their forum. Gee, I wonder if there’s a larger trend that this can map onto.
Even a subject as utterly benign as tea requires moderators to play an active role in setting boundaries so that the discourse doesn’t devolve into a tribalistic shitshow. Inevitably, it seems, this is just something that large groups of people on the internet are inclined to do. Even if only a small number of people disseminate misinformation, others will quickly jump on it and call it out, leading others to chime in and defend it, which in turn leads to more critics joining the fray, and so on and so forth until it consumes the entire community. Furthermore, when these chaotic online debates have no rules, no structure, and no one moderating them, they quickly stop being debates and turn into simple displays of animosity, rife with insults, condescension, and ultimately, a lot of doubling-down. These conditions result in a discourse that is less open, less civil, and certainly less constructive, as all of the loudest, most belligerent voices on either side are elevated while nuance falls on deaf ears.
Rules can stifle open discourse, but they’re also what allows it to happen
It may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes a social value, like free speech, tolerance, or non-violence, must be selectively subverted in order to be maintained. This is obvious to most people when it comes to violence. If a person is committing acts of violence towards others, the proper response is to forcibly arrest that person and bring them to justice. In other words, lawful violence is used to stop chaotic violence. The same is true for tolerance, as the philosopher Karl Popper famously explained. If we want to live in a tolerant society, the one thing we can’t tolerate is intolerance. Tolerating intolerance allows the intolerant to consolidate power, which they then wield in intolerant ways (something we saw in abundance during the Trump years). It can sound paradoxical at first, but these small subversions of otherwise laudable values are what allow those values to thrive.
Political economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson talk about this (in a broader sense) in their latest book, The Narrow Corridor. The authors acknowledge that the existence of stable political institutions is what allows certain countries to grow and flourish while others fail. Acemoglu and Robinson therefore call on the state to be a “shackled leviathan,” or a state powerful enough to set rules and parameters for a civil society wherein everyone’s rights are respected, but still restrained in its ability to limit individual liberty. If the leviathan is unrestrained, it will trample all over the rights and liberties of its citizens. But if it’s too small and weak, it won’t have the power to protect and preserve those rights and liberties in the first place.
The same principle can then be applied to the equally important social value of free speech. What actually allows people in a constitutional democracy to have an open, civil, and rational debate? If one side can’t agree that arguments should be civil in first place, or that bold assertions must be backed by evidence, or that objective facts even exist, or that the other side is even a legitimate opponent, then how will it ever be possible for both sides to come together in good faith?
If what you want to see is more civility and mutual respect, then perhaps it’s time to quit playing the “both sides” game and start looking at which side of the aisle is actively undermining these values. Instead of lecturing people on both sides about the merits of civility and open discourse, maybe you should be looking at which side’s whole identity now revolves around incivility, pandering to militant extremism, and fighting against the open society.
If someone tells me that they have the right to steal my microphone, and that me preventing them from doing so would somehow be a violation of their free speech, then they simply don’t understand what free speech is or how it is maintained. Not only do various platforms have the right to moderate their content, but doing so is actually what allows civil discourse to take place. The same reality applies in the halls of Congress. If both sides want to have a constructive debate, they must both be operating in the same reality and playing by the same rules (or in this case, norms). If one side refuses to do so, then they alone are standing in the way of a more open and civilized national dialogue.
