Thread by @jholbo1

If you want to break up Big Tech, propose an even-handed, muscular response to monopoly danger. Dust off anti-trust, roll up your sleeves and get to work. Great! But don't just whine about how you can't get away with being an awful troll, but the Ayatollahs are on Twitter. 1/

Both can be true:
1) Twitter should not get to decide who speaks, in the whole world.
2) If you conduct yourself with bare, civic decency, respecting baseline norms and ideals all citizens of an advanced liberal democracy should share, Twitter currently won't ban you! 2/

Conservatives look at the low bar of 2 and shriek, 'there's no way we can clear THAT, we're conservatives! If we're politicians, the base will have our hides for that!' That is ALSO a problem, in addition to the real problem that Twitter shouldn't police the speech world. 3/

Currently R pols are wishcasting for the socialization of trolling. That is, they are looking for a carve-out, for just themselves, from the current, Big Tech-enforced requirement that they behave with decency. That's not a fix for 1. If they got it, it would make 1 worse. 4/

It shouldn't be the role - or the right - of Big Tech, to require conservatives to behave with decency. Yet conservatives should, because it is right, uphold that low standard, even if no one is going to punish them for not doing so. 5/

Leaving Big Tech basically running the show, monopoly-wise, merely stripped of the capacity to use their power for civic good - lest they choose to use it for evil next time - is not a plan, merely a dodge from conservatives looking to commit more present evils. 6/

CLARIFICATION: I don't mean to imply twitterbans are currently efficient and optimal. Mostly that the ban that is currently slapping cons is normatively reasonable, broadly. It is ethically reasonable to have a rule that bans Trump - ergo many who, loudly, follow him.

Further clarification: Twitter reasonably (with exceptions!) only worries about what people do on Twitter. If the Ayatollahs sound calm on Twitter they should be fine. If they call for the destruction of Israel on Twitter, they should get banned. Obviously It’s a bit absurd.