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>"Public Square" online is a fallacy. A public square is typically thought of where someone grabs the attention of all passerby and is voicing their thoughts.

and if you're a crazy person or verbally abusive or maybe just shouting things that while maybe true are insulting to the public morality then the police come and carry you away.

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Or picketed so their speech is drowned out, or even punched in the nose by passers by.

You can argue if this is good or bad, but it’s a fundamental difference between the public square and digital recreations: in the real world, speech can have meaningful consequences. In the Twitter world, you create a new profile.

It feels like a problem of scale. One person shouting and getting carried away, whoever is right or wrong in that scenario, is still one person. Now extend that to everyone shouting at everyone in what has become the de facto public square and the stakes involved in deciding who to carry away feel existential in scale.

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