Real Chilling Effects | Hacker News Reader

Real Chilling Effects

donmoynihan.substack.com

185 pointsZeroGravitas171 comments

> A couple of weeks ago, students asked we keep the discussions, but stop recording the class. They worried about any record of their words that might be viewed as criticism of the current administration, and somehow weaponized against them.

Kudos to the students who were not only aware of this general risk (not just under the current regime, but in many societies), and acted to improve their situation.

Next, they should look at how they're under almost ubiquitous technological surveillance, with little-to-no protections. And now there's emerging "AI" methods to automate harvesting insights from the ubiquitous surveillance fire hoses, and also to automate actions to suppress enemies of the regime. And if you look around, at the pace we're going, it's very easy to believe this will start happening within a year. Maybe they'll decide that one of the best defenses for national security that could happen right now is to cut off the surveillance data wherever possible.

Words being weaponized is a problem that exists for multiple years now in the US. From the free press [1]:

"To give a sense of proportion, only three professors were fired or forced out of schools over something they said in the post-9/11 panic. The modern era of cancel culture (2014 to present), by contrast, has resulted in almost 200 professor terminations. That exceeds even the standard estimate of 100 professors terminated in the second Red Scare (1947 to 1957)."

[1]: https://www.thefp.com/p/american-colleges-gave-birth-to-canc...

Where does Free Press source the claim that 200 professors were fired due to cancel culture? I looked on the site because I want to see the actual reasons the professors were fired (reasons can be justified) but could not find them. The linked The Fire website displays zero results for filtering by "Outcome is Termination"

Absolutely! But it was quite limited, to colleges etc. Now it's potentially all of US government employees. And, I assume, most of the private ones ?

So .. basically everyone in the US.

Maybe also people working for US companies abroad? Some of them did at least shut down DEI initiatives in Europe, so not so far fetched to think it is/will affect who they hire? "Oh, this candidate was outspoken against Trump on social media" . Of course, many places this will be seen as a good thing, so maybe it evens out, outside of the US.

The “cancel culture” scare was a marketing campaign designed to elect right-wing politicians, not a serious free speech movement. You can note how many of the people involved have been silent or even expressed enthusiasm for the speech of their political opponents being stifled now.

They said "sense of proportion" and then proceeded to omit the denominator, presumably because it would contradict their overblown point. The number of college professors in the US has by far more than doubled since the 1950s, so they're essentially saying "cancel culture" is much less impactful than the Red Scare.

I’m surprised it even needs to be said, but the government arbitrarily revoking visas (and, eventually, citizenships) for speech and behavior unpalatable to the regime is far worse than firings related to social media outrage. Cancel culture will not cause your entire life to get uprooted or get you thrown in some ICE blacksite. And however you may feel about social pressure, cultural compliance enforced by an elite embedded in the government is a much bigger threat to our freedoms.

very good itemization of what's happening, thank you for doing this. Unfortunately, one very important bullet point was missing: the world's richest man and arguably most influential in the white house controls a large internet satellite constellation and has acquired tremendous geopolitical power, even before having the president's ear. This is the single biggest threat out there I believe, as he has already had an impact on the Ukrainian front, and world leaders continue to placate him in fear of Starlink service being cut off in their country. I still don't understand how a private american company was allowed to obtain such geopolitical power, but this is by the far the most worrying point that needs to be brought up a lot more

> I still don't understand how a private american company was allowed to obtain such geopolitical power,

No one else wanted to spend the money to sustain the organization needed to put those satellites in service.

It’s that simple. GPS is there because someone spent sufficient money developing it.

No worries various groups will create or increase their own space investments. Nothing spacex did was a miracle just well executed engineering, despite an whimsical idiot steering it from far enough.

Correction globally will take some time, but it will be a permanent one. You don't develop your own space program to scrape it in few years. Europe is there with pretty healthy space program, China may become more open to others, India is way beyond initial successful steps. Reusable rockets are great when they work, but again thats just (at this point well tested) engineering.

China just needs to sit and smile how US is handling them global leadership one big chunk a day. Maybe in 4 years we can send elon permanently on mars with 8 billion middle fingers raised as a 'salute', to start future setup that The expanse showed us or to die there miserably.

Isn't it predicted that if three or four companies do what SpaceX did, we get Kessler syndrome?

No, Starlink satellite orbits decay too rapidly to cause Kessler syndrome.

Not all of them want their satellites to decay quickly.

I was talking about what would happen if three or four companies did what SpaceX did, not what would happen if three or four companies did something else. I agree that there are things that three or four companies could do, or even one company could do, that would cause Kessler syndrome.

> Nothing spacex did was a miracle just well executed engineering

There were so many failures that I wouldn't call it "well executed". More like "work hard until it happens to succeed".

Basically, countries where private people are allowed to build things like Falcon and Starlink progress technologically and economically, and countries where they aren't progress, if at all, much more slowly. Instead, they suffer a brain drain of those people and then have to rely on the freer countries for things like communications services and weapons.

This article is about the US changing which group of countries it belongs to, much as China did 40 years ago. So you are likely to get your wish in the sense that US companies will probably not be allowed to build such things anymore, because they might pose a threat to King JD's power.

There's a multi-decadal controversy in sociology and political science over whether some countries are forced to adopt the regressive approach because of structural geographic factors they can't control (such as low population density or aggressive neighbours) or whether every country has a choice. The US definitely has a choice, FWIW.

[edit] Of course the anthropomorphization I've used here isn't a completely serious representation of states, they are a mass of interconnected people and not individual agents, but the metaphor is a valuable shortcut.

The US isn't a consciousness, so I think it's not meaningful to ascribe choices to it. Admittedly, I kind of did in my comment! But the reality is that these changes in course are the emergent outcomes of interactions between factions with different interests influenced by individuals with different interests and the memes that are most fecund, not the choices of a shadowy puppetmaster pulling the strings from behind the scenes like a Civ 5 player. That's why it's so common for societies to take obviously self-destructive courses of action.

> I still don't understand how a private american company was allowed to obtain such geopolitical power

Interesting way to see this, as you immediately went to a zero-sum approach of winner takes all, and the other countries must be brain dead. What I meant in this case was, how did the EU not foresee this and dramatically ramp up their internet satellite capabilities. Arguably, the answer is simple, as this was a rhetorical question: the EU approached this topic as they did a lot of things recently - no action, lots of regulation and facing the consequences or said inaction right now

A lot of that regulation was justified precisely by appealing to the principle that private companies should not be allowed to build things that would give them such power.

I don't think it's either a winner-take-all situation or a zero-sum one.

That's a good point - I see what you mean

The countries that allowed things like Starlink to be built also had regulations to protect democracy from the power of money, such as media ownership rules, campaign finance laws and high marginal income taxes. Those have all been swept aside.

It isn't clear that democracy is a prerequisite. The UK was a monarchy, albeit a parliamentary one, in the 19th century. The PRC was a one-party state with strictly limited political freedom in the period 01980–02015. Germany in the late 19th and early 20th century was a monarchy. Taiwan was a single-party state under martial law. Freedom of entrepreneurship and the resulting industrialization is clearly not dependent on democracy.

Do they? Pay in Europe is lower, but life is a lot nicer. If you aren't chasing the numbers and you aren't host to an American strain of brainwashing that makes you think it's the only free country, life in Europe is better.

It probably depends on what your personal situation is in Europe.

One country in Europe is currently being invaded by another European country†, resulting so far in about a million casualties and 16 million refugees. Both countries have established conscription and prohibited emigration for military-age men.

To me this seems like a bigger determinant of how nice life is than anything related to either pay or the level of economic and technological development. Perhaps you disagree.

______

† Some might debate whether it's a European country, because much of its territory is in Asia. However, its capital, currently on fire due to large-scale drone attacks last night, is the largest city in Europe, and most of its population is in Europe.

When people say "Europe is a nicer place to live" they do not mean eastern Ukraine. I think you know this.

Even the political instability in the rest of it is less severe than the political instability in the USA. At least for now. I mean, 40% of Germany's land area voted for Nazis to come back, but every other serious party is saying they will not work with the Nazis, which is not how it would go down in the USA.

> When people say "Europe is a nicer place to live" they do not mean eastern Ukraine.

You can cherry-pick living situations from anywhere in the world. St. Louis, MO is probably a pretty nice place to live if you're living inside Jack Dorsey's house. If you want to make general statements about how nice it is to live on entire continents, you need to take the entire continent into account, not just the part of it you like most or least.

Fortunately for America, most of America is outside the USA, and is very unenthusiastic about the authoritarian tendencies growing in parts of it like El Salvador and the USA.

I feel many of us in the IT world have stood along side this descent in real time, because technology has been an enabler (far from being an equaliser). We were mostly mute because of money and traction.

Will Durant and his wife have spent multiple decades writing history books. One of their observations was that technology creates inequality, see the book Lessons of History.

Having said that, I still think technology has been a net positive. Just imagine living in 1900. It would take months to go from Europe to the US. Medicine was able to cure almost nothing. What we consider simple diseases now would be deadly back then. And you can forget about watching or listening your favorite musicians online. Also, imagine driving with a modern car into a 1900s village. People would be in shock.

> I still think technology has been a net positive.

I stopped thinking this a decade or so ago. I now think that technology has become a net negative.

Yes, it brings huge benefits as you note. The problem as I see it is that it now brings even larger drawbacks as well.

You rather live in 1900? Or pay $100k for 8 kW of solar panels (1974 price) instead of $2k? Or pay orders of magnitude more money for slow computers?

How about we re-frame it as would you rather have one person or a group of people to destroy a city or the entire planet and intelligent life on it? Would you rather be able to enslave a particular region or the entire world ?

You see, we are trading improvements in some aspects to that of another.

The thing is you cannot separate the benefits these technological advancements bring with the problems they create. The rate of technological change is much more rapid than our ability as a society to adapt to it. This is one of the source of friction as the negative effect become real only later.

There is no physical law that says technology has to improve - it is our quest, or drive to seek it, we choose it, every time. And I say this as someone who is part of this.

Look how elon was worshipped here, long after his mental issues, massive ego and racist south African nepo kid upbringing started coming out with force.

I find it very shortsighted to substract features from personalities of successful visible people that one likes and (selectively) ignore the rest. Why the heck, adult people don't like absolute truths and don't understand those are inseparable parts of a single whole?

elon is a fascist pos, gates is probably a pedophile/hebephile (epstein) pos, so is clinton and orange man, all good epstein's friends. Jobs was a horrible person. Yes they did or are doing some good, but above is still valid. And so on and on.

Elon's track record with effective management in the first decade of SpaceX was genuinely impressive and led to bullish misunderstandings about the rest of his career (and is still impressive today even after accounting for every other part of his character and contemporary drug use). The guy running the country today doesn't have the impulse control or intellectual curiosity to accomplish the stuff he used to accomplish.

The best generic explanation I've read on this phenomenon is the article "Shallow Feedback Hollows You Out" by Midjourney's Ivan Vendrov:

https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/shallow-feedback-hollows...

I also wonder how much of that was his working relationship with Shotwell. Nationally it looks like he doesn’t have anyone he trusts who can tell him when he’s making a mistake or redirect him towards a more useful use of his time. I’d believe that much of the credit for SpaceX is really a team of people he met early enough that there’s no way to replicate that relationship.

It’s a different context but I’m reminded of how George Lucas’ work got a lot worse after his divorce from Marcia Lucas, who was not only a very talented film editor in her own right but also apparently unique for having the ability to get him to actually listen to constructive criticism.

Impressive it may have been, but he is still firmly in pos camp. Hitler (if I really have to go full Godwin) was a decent painter, loyal friend to those few close to him and a dog lover. Amon Goeth may have been a great manager too, at least from certain perspective. Who cares?

Having or applying flexible morality is a very slippery slope to no morality. I mean we're not discussing some academical theory but real situation and real person. People are shocked in recent weeks, I am not just mildly disappointed. The signs were there.

Just to be clear - with such brutal logic many sport folks become undefendable. Or generally famous people. For good reasons. I am fine with that, no need to desperately put people on pedestals which are temporary at best, the whole idea of desperately looking upon somebody is fine in childhood but adults should know better.

Did you read the post from yesterday's front page called Discworld Rules? It put the argument I'd like to make about the poor ideological/mental health of many fascists more eloquently that I can.

Remember, Elon was an avid supporter of minority rights a decade ago.

It's worth to keep in mind that it took only about 2 years for this one guy from Austria to remove the final backstops the society had in place before until he was able to become the supreme leader in the 1930's.

2 years.

What has been hard won and fought over can easily be lost very fast and the only way to regain it will be through blood and violence.

53 days, surely? The gleischaltung had finishing disbarring every non-NSDAP lawyer, firing every non-NSDAP judge, firing every state governor and seizing a voting majority in every state legislature in less than two months after the Enabling Act was passed.

I mean the time frame in which he took his party from nothing to the second biggest in the parliament and then got himself promoted from the party leader to Chancellor. Of course then the ultimate power was then seized rapidly as you say once he was already selected as the Chancellor.

Yet to see any of the Free Speech Absolutists come out in defence of actual free speech and against the tyranny of far right lunatics running the federal government, weirdly enough.

People forget what free speech really is though. The most important point is a contract with the government: that they hold a monopoly on the ability to censor and control speech. That any other group who threatens anyone for their speech must be dealth with using even hand of the force of law by the government/legal regime.

Mobs suppressing your free speech is never ok. It is a sign of a government that is no longer in power.

It is unclear exactly what these students are worried about ... the details should be provided. Are they discussing the organization of violent resistance for example? Or are they merely worried that simple discussion of government policy will somehow land them in jail. The latter seems ridiculous but it is worth hearing them out in detail.

And somehow in all of this, people on one side are forgetting the numerous attempts at assasination. And the successful assasination of a CEO. Regardless of your political angles, the risk is severaly one sided by any empirical measure right now. To dismiss this is to remove yourself from serious discussion.

> It is unclear exactly what these students are worried about

> They worried about any record of their words that might be viewed as criticism of the current administration, and somehow weaponized against them.

hth.

This is literally not what free speech is as defined in the US Constitution.

Constitutionally protected speech is speech criticising or commenting on the government, and defines the right of citizens to do so.

The government has never had a reaponsibility to ensure all speech is heard, it certainly is not granted a monopoly on power of censorship (again, literally the opposite - no one else has to grant you a platform, but the government cannot take it away), and if you're worried about the power of "the mob" then you really should've worried more when the Supreme Court ruled the police had no duty to protect citizens.

> And somehow in all of this, people on one side are forgetting the numerous attempts at assasination. And the successful assasination of a CEO.

Has the side you're thinking of pardoned the (would be/alleged) assassins? Or perhaps mounted a coup attempt, blamed others for failing to suppress it sooner, then called it a "day of love"?

"Give me the man and I will give you the case against him" [0]

It isn't that they're discussing anything which would traditionally be considered risky or out of bounds - that's the whole point. It's that they're discussing anything to do with an organisation which has made it quite clear that if it disagrees with you, it will find some way to make your life miserable. Even if it doesn't disagree with you today, who knows what it will disagree with tomorrow? This is the absolute classic way of instilling fear in a population, the original chilling effect - when you don't know what will be forbidden tomorrow, better to say nothing today.

Your latter point on assassination attempts is also very odd. It conflates some broadly disconnected things (an actual attempt on a presidential candidate) with an apparent murder based on political views, two unrelated but very direct consequences which you could perhaps correlate through the types of people targeted. On the other hand you completely ignore the wider systemic violence inherent in stripping people of jobs, healthcare, social security, etc. Do you think those actions will have no consequences? That no deaths will result? Just because a chain of action might have more than one link, doesn't mean the consequences can be dismissed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_the_man_and_I_will_giv...

> "Give me the man and I will give you the case against him" [0]

And in the opposite direction as well, where someone is probably guilty of something and prosecution is held back if they're on the 'right side', e.g.:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_U.S._Department_of_Justic...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigations_into_the_Eric_A...

People think of authoritarianism as going after someone, which was prevalent in the 20th century; but it can also be protecting (and enriching) your friends, which has become popular in 21st century regimes.

Oh absolutely - both are already quite apparent.

> People forget what free speech really is though. The most important point is a contract with the government: that they hold a monopoly on the ability to censor and control speech. That any other group who threatens anyone for their speech must be dealth with using even hand of the force of law by the government/legal regime

WHAT?

This is literally the EXACT OPPOSITE of free speech, at least as it is defined in America. The 1st Amendment SPECIFICALLY AND SOLELY prevents the government from putting its thumb on the scales.

Private parties are necessarily allowed to respond to speech with whatever other speech they wish to use, including utilizing their rights to free association (or non-association) in response to what you say.

This is absolutely 100% backwards. I highly suggest reading some basic American civics material or something.

> Mobs suppressing your free speech is never ok

Of course it is sometimes ok. There is no absolute here. It's neither always nor never. If it's never okay, then it is "tyranny of the majority". If it is always ok, then it is "minority rule".

1) Are we pretending the two assassination attempts were by left-wingers now, in addition to all the rest of the pretending? Trump gave them permission, anyway. I mean he had a different candidate in mind, but still.

2) The CEO thing was popular across the board, not just with democrats. Health insurance companies are that bad. Everyone who’s not taking their bribes hates them, and I mean hares. Also: again, not a left winger, so yes, I agree with you that right wingers should be regarded as dangerous.

I'm wondering when the well-armed militia (that's been the excuse for countless shootings) designed to revolt against tyrannical government is going to even say anything. Or is it perhaps, that those guns and gun-culture are for something else...

> Peter Baker, the New York Times White House correspondent, compared the current moment to his time at Russia at the beginning of the Putin era:

> By the time we left in late 2004, Moscow had been transformed. People who had happily talked with us at the start were now afraid to return our calls. “Now I have this fear all the time,” one told us at the time. There is a similar chill now in Washington. Every day someone who used to feel free to speak publicly against Mr. Trump says they will no longer let journalists quote them by name for fear of repercussions, both Democrats and Republicans

I'm very curious about why americans always use examples from China and Russia to describe something shit happening in the USA

> Some compared the atmosphere to Maoist China, so great were the chilling effects.

i mean, americans have their own history - it's short but it's remarkable

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

In China, when something like this happens, some people shout, "Are we going back to the Cultural Revolution?!"

Why Americans don't talk about McCarthyism?

"Are we going back to the McCarthyism???"

Nobody ever said this

I see comparisons to the red scare/communism/mccarthyism all the time, personally. In addition to the other comparisons you mention.

that's great, we can only move forward if we keep looking back into our history

Unfortunately, “have you no decency, sir?” is no longer an effective antidote.

If even half of this is true, I wonder what the future of HN is? THis forum is backed by Ycombinator, a US based "investment" company. Do they have plans to relocate to friendlier climes?

I'm sure they'll find a way to make a profit working with the system rather than against it.

Quite - so far the tech community (at the top level), with a few exceptions, has shown itself quite willing to bend itself to whatever is required as long as it can carry on making money. The cowardice involved is apparent, do not look to corporations as your potential protectors. They've never turned out to be before, they're not going to be this time either. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...

What makes you think that Zuck, Ellison, Pichai etc are "obeying in advance" and haven't already received implied verbal threats of imprisonment?

Meta or Alphabet did whatever they needed to extract profits from their users. What makes you think that all of a sudden they would pivot from chasing profits to defending those users, as opposed to playing ball with whoever they need to in order to make even more profits?

What matters at the end of the day is that despite all the big talk of "freedom of speech" and "doing what's right", companies like Meta or YC almost always bend the knee (and the spine) and play ball to make money even if it contradicts everything they purportedly stood for. Just replace the motto.

> What makes you think that all of a sudden they would pivot from chasing profits to defending those users,

You're putting YC into the same box as Meta? I'm probably very naive, but I think it's necessary to defend your users if your business model depends on them. What is YC's business model? It's "innovation". HN is a forum cultivated to encourage free exchange of disruptive ideas. That is not possible under conditions of technofascism. I expect the creators of this forum understand that, are worried, but have maybe convinced themselves it's safe to play along at ideology for now. If I thought there were not a significant cohort of humanist/anti-fascist technologists here I would not stay or contribute and I expect I speak for many others.

> You're putting YC into the same box as Meta?

Only in the sense that their primary interest is making money and they'll do what it takes to keep making money, whether that's in education, crypto, social media, or the euphemistically called "defense" industry.

> I think it's necessary to defend your users if your business model depends on them

As a user of Big Tech I'm having a hard time coming up with too many situations when I was "defended" by them. Rather exploited just short of losing me (and occasionally past that).

> HN is a forum cultivated to encourage free exchange of disruptive ideas. That is not possible under conditions of technofascism.

HN is just a place for people to talk. The actions are where the checks are written, and that's YC. For YC the best bet is to keep playing ball and not endanger the money stream. Almost none of these companies are actively fighting what's going on now. They're trying to straddle the line between playing ball with the power while looking moral about it.

Yes, most spineless. Community is shared interests worth standing up for together all the same, so it's not always a watering-hole around money. But I get your drift.

Trump agreed on TV, that he believed meta’s capitulation was out of fear of him.

For the country of free speech, to have not even noticed a threat to a media company? How is America in a position to say anything to anyone?

Having a global investment portfolio and probably several doomsday bunkers also helps to be indifferent about it all.

The elite Silicon Valley venture capitalist class has made it pretty clear which side they're on.

They pick their sides for profitable expedience. I expect they would betray those sides just as fast for profitable expedience. US, EU, it's all one big world, and business never prospers in the long-run under the heel of a boot.

Is it a monoculture? obviously theres Thiel and his clan. But are there other powerful elements?

It's time to look for an European HN alternative.

I agree but I think most people will reject the idea without considering it if it isn't formatted as a 1500-word article hosted on substack.

FTR that's not what I'm suggesting. Good communities are worth protecting and preserving. But that means looking out for threats to a community and defending the members. Clearly moderators (of all US-based forums) are facing a hard time. And FWIW it's even worse in UK where forum hosts are simply shutting down rather than face draconian threat tactics of deliberate ambiguity (by OFCOM).

I see an even bigger problem with Wikipedia.

How long time will it be before they are pressured to censor or change articles?

Will they even have the power to move?

Wikipedia is already a target. The Heritage Foundation (who wrote Project 2025) is planning to identify and doxx editors. Reported by Forward who obtained the documents: https://forward.com/news/686797/heritage-foundation-wikipedi...

Strictly speaking that is probably not as important a risk as the direct political risk of the Wikipedia 501c being involuntarily dissolved by AG Pam Bondi.

Wikimedia has spent years setting up a parallel org in Germany. The internet archive, ICANN, PCH and IETF are far more exposed to U.S. risk than WMF.

Germany has similar problems but at least they are confined to the topic of Israel. If Wikipedia's hosted in Germany right now, it's committing a crime there.

> Do they have plans to relocate to friendlier climes?

Bro, do you even know who Paul Graham is? He'll do anything to satisfy those turds and then write a blog post about how being kind to others is destroying the world.

You might remember he was one of those recommending to vote for Harris. And some of the reasons he gave can be found also in the article btw.

Recommending Harris and sucking up to whoever wins are not mutually exclusive ideas in the realm of people with too much money.

Also, and this is a big also, he defended Elon buying Twitter for free speech. So I'd say his grasp of what should actually constitute free speech (the topic in this article) is a bit muddled at the moment

Paul Graham wrote some very fine LISP books IIRC, and that's absolutely all I know about him. We may have had some cordial exchanges here on HN. To the extent Mr Graham is influential on this forum I'm sure he understands the peril facing any nexus of open speech in the current technofascist climate.

I don't know if it's a co-incidence but this topic disappeared from the front page faster than you can say "front page"...

It's ok, dang will fix it

dang for president!

Honestly, step one is for the folks screaming “free speech” and arguing about censorship to see what’s happening, and what real threats to free speech look like. We spent years being told that moderation on private social media was the worst possible thing in the world, and today there’s a real possibility of government prosecutions for protected speech. Even if you don’t like the people being threatened and chilled right now, it will be you eventually.

This was not said for years. This became a thing post COVID and Trump.

I couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to content moderation if I tried. Only after misinfo and false hoods became the fuel of politics, did the filters and janitors become an issue.

“Content moderation is allowed to work as long as they dont touch the wires that carry political power”

This was the message when the Stanford internet observatory got targeted.

I agree that what trump is doing is a threat to free speech, i really wish there was some kind of non partisan free speech faction in US politics but there doesn't seem to be. In any case, i'm replying to this post because you're apparently blind to your hubris.

> Even if you don’t like the people being threatened and chilled right now, it will be you eventually."

Maybe you should give yourself your own advice. You seemingly stood by doing nothing and even still think you're in a position make fun of people campaigning for free speech protections on social media (especially considering the fact that the government was indeed involved in censoring speech on these platforms). You literally already had the chance to stand up for people being threatened and chilled and not only actively chose not to, you stood in opposition to those people because you deemed it not "real" enough for you. You are not above anyone else nor are you in a position to lecture anyone else on this topic, ever.

I deemed it real because I believed and still believe that private companies (even if I dislike them) have the right to moderate speech as they please. A big section of the right wing believes differently and passed laws in several states overriding that principle, while proclaiming that a direct and obvious violation of the First Amendment was actually “free speech.” I also believed and still believe that this fake free-speech posturing would lead directly to what’s happening now: direct governmental attacks on speech the administration doesn’t like.

You may be a troll or so lost in politics that nothing reaches you anymore. But if you’re actually an American who cares about the bill of rights, the time to stand up has already arrived. It’s going to be hard for you to do so if you’re busy telling people “well, the government using police to target opponents is bad, but here’s this other thing that manifestly isn’t as bad and I am going to dismiss the former and dwell on the latter.”

The government was moderating speech through those private companies, like twitter. Before musk bought it was literally taking government orders on what to censor, so your basic argument is not responding to what i already said. You come off as a dishonest, incoherent person and you're now saying i'm dismissing the thing i spent the first paragraph acknowledging, then calling me a troll. Wacky.

Given you have now proven you have no interest in standing up for other people's free speech until it's you being threatened you will unfortunately find it hard to convince anyone. Even now you have no ability to admit you were wrong in the past to cheer other people's free speech rights being taken away. What a disappointment.

They see what's happening and they like it. They never supported free speech other than their own.

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Might be a strawman, but it seems this kind of person reverses the order of time.

People worrying about free speech before (and now in the UK) are ignored, called hysterical etc ... yet the minute someone is worried about Orange Man it's legitimate worry and you are hypocritical if you feel schadenfreude a bit.

Denialism is a real poison. Sided worryists/denialists are the real problem.

I'm not sure how to call them out without engaging in the same games they play themselves.

There are groups doing great work though, like the FSU in the UK.

I think this is confusing two things, intentionally:

1. Free speech in the public sphere includes the right of people offended by your speech to express that they are offended (to speak back). People like Toby Young (founder of the FSU), and those who decry "cancel culture" do not like this, but it is part of what constitutes genuine free expression.

2. Free speech against the government, which the government should not be allowed to punish people for, to enable a pluralistic and democratic society. E.g. someone like Mahmoud Khalil who was recently arrested for his political views on Palestine (in violation of both the principles of free speech and his rights as a green card holder).

People angry about #1 (arguing) tend to conflate it with #2 (genuine censorship), and accuse people who accuse those approximately equal (or less) in power than them as equivalent to draconian speech-controllers. People angry about #2 are pointing out a genuine power imbalance, and the damage to democratic society.

Elon Musk embodies this perfectly: he argues in favor of free speech when people tell him his opinions are objectionable, but actively censors speech on Twitter that he doesn't like. In one situation, he simply wants people to receive his speech without speaking back, in another, he wants to stifle discussion.

Speech is not a unidirectional activity. In order for it to be valuable and protected, the act of speaking in public is the act of listening to criticisms of what you say.

To add some nuance about the US’s 1st Amendment: it is not just speech against the government that is protected. It is that all speech is protected from the government.

The government also is not allowed to imprison you or threaten you for speech about another private party, for example.

pro-palestinian protestors were arrested under biden admin too, does it mean there's 'limited' free speech at the biden era?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/2000-people-arrested-na...

i mean, how much free it should be to be free speech, how far it can be 'limited' but still is free speech

I'm not defending for trump or elon musk, in case you want to know it

Yes absolutely. The free speech of pro-palestine protestors has been restricted since the start

You actually think there’s no difference between Department of Homeland Security’s federal agents and a local municipal (or sometimes even campus) police force arresting someone?

Arresting someone for a crime is obviously not a problem, and generally protestors commit all sorts of minor nuisance civil violations for which they get arrested, booked, and released — all of which must be done without regard to the content of the speech being exercised during the violation. Deploying federal officers to go hunt down specific individuals and then disappearing them across state lines and modifying their immigration status without due process is absolutely unequivocally in a totally different league.

Trump has specifically said he’s going after people for the content of their speech. This is illegal and is totally different from what happened under Biden.

Randall Munroe explained freedom of speech better than I could - https://xkcd.com/1357/

You seem to be invoking the tired old trope of "both sides bad". But they're not. The government pardoning rioters and punishing law firms is not the same as individuals saying "you know what, fuck Roseanne Barr, I don't want to watch her show anymore."

You're tying yourself in knots to establish a false equivalence between the two. But it's clear as day that they're not.

Can you not see how what that XKCD says which sounds so reasonable and innocuous will look to the people on the receiving end: that they are being shamed by an aggressive, vocal minority because of the views they sincerely hold? That this intolerance or deplatorming or whatever it gets called is likely to start as mere people not liking what you say and end in burning? Maybe both sides aren't as bad as each other but they're sure as blind as each other.

What do you propose as an alternative? That people should have listen to/host a certain percentage of unpopular views regardless of will? There is nothing stopping you creating your own platform, or finding one where you're welcome - if that fails to get much traction, it's probably because your message isn't very popular, and the people opposed to it perhaps weren't a minority.

What is it that you should do with, let's say, Nazis? Should the rest of society not make it clear that they consider them abhorrent?

There's no reason to reach for the Nazis. As an example they are the reverse of clarifying.

What I've seen the last 15 years is both right and left aggressively hollowing out the centre. Views that would have been vaguely centre right in the Clinton era described as fascistic. Views that would have been faintly centre left treated as communist propaganda. And the contempt and hatred on both sides showed me that nobody despite their protestations would have any problem with their opponents being subjected to any kind of suppression if they had the power to do so...

Edit: to answer your question I do not have the solution but I believe better psychology and more respect for the other view point is certainly the starting point.

I'm going to paste in the xkcd transcript here, just so we're on the same page.

> Public Service Announcement: The Right to Free Speech means the government can't arrest you for what you say. It doesn't mean that anyone else has to listen to your bullshit, or host you while you share it. The 1st Amendment doesn't shield you from criticism or consequences. If you're yelled at, boycotted, have your show canceled, or get banned from an Internet community, your free speech rights aren't being violated. It's just that the people listening think you're an asshole, and they're showing you the door.

If we don't like someone, we don't need to support them right? If I'm right wing, and I don't like Taylor Swift's views on politics, I don't need to support her. More than that, there's nothing wrong with me telling my friends "guys, don't go to her concerts, she's a terrible person." This is fine! It is completely ok! Taylor Swift might be in dire financial straits because we don't give her our money, but that's the consequence of her sharing views that her fans don't.

Of course in an ideal world we separate the art from the artist etc, but we don't need to. It's part of our right to free speech to associate only with those we want to.

And certainly let's not try to set up a false equivalence between boycotting (or "cancelling") Swift with the Federal Government penalising lawyers for doing their jobs. Anyone entering a thread about Trump weaponising the government talking about "muh cancel culture did it first", that's a low quality contribution that only empowers Trump and his lackeys.

What I'm saying is that the poor psychology and overreach of one side empowered him in the first place. And I see no sign of those people understanding their role in that dynamic.

I hear you.

I'm saying you're mistaken.

Just because Trump justifies his terrible acts by pointing out to DEI, cancel culture or whatever, doesn't mean those things were wrong. You're thinking of an alternate history where there was no cancel culture and there would be no Trump, and therefore the people who cancelled anyone are responsible for Trump.

No. Trump voters are responsible for Trump. Trump is responsible for Trump. Someone who said "fuck Roseanne Barr, I'll never watch her show again" has 0 responsibility.

That's bully mentality, that the bully was provoked and is somewhat justified.

Just hypothetically, if people stopped buying Teslas because they didn’t like the CEO, and the stock price fell 50% in 2 months, is that cancel culture too? Is that “poor psychology”? Are we “overreaching”? Should we go out there and buy Teslas and Tesla stock so that the CEO’s feelings don’t get hurt?

Come on man, be real. Stop it with the enlightened centrism.

But if you own the biggest social network in the world and say "Taylor Swift is no longer allowed to advertise or promote her music on this platform", just because you don't agree with her politics, people might see that as censorship, or at least shady.

That is true, a social network doing it is not the same as an individual doing it.

But social networks are businesses too, right. They're beholden to advertisers, just like network TV. So what they allow is constrained by what advertisers will accept. And lastly, the network is beholden to its own users. If the users don't like being surrounded by Nazis, they'll leave.

Compare Twitter when it was bought to it now. On any metric it's much worse. Lower revenue, 10x lower valuation. It's a cesspit, but at least no right winger is censored right! That's something.

I was actually taught Analysis I and II in the former HQs of the Romanian Communist Party's Cadres Faculty (the infamous A250 classroom, for those that attended Computer Science school at Bucharest Politehnica), that was happening towards the end of the '90s - early 2000s, but never in my life back then I would have thought to bring up politics up in class, to the contrary. Which is to say, why are these students afraid of?

The catalog of events near the beginning of the post is very valuable. The false dichotomy that runs through the post ("what if the real threat to free speech was the reactionary despot we made along the way?") is not; it is counterproductive. In the US, neither the left wing nor the right supports freedom of speech. That's how we got into this situation.

It's sad and depressing what's happening.

And even more depressing is how little fight there seems to be, and how spineless many are.

From politicians to big tech and just most people: They sit down quietly, hoping this will just blow over, or that someone else will take the fight so they don't have to.

Don't make it easy! Don't do their job for them! Don't self-censor. Make them show their cards! If not, by the time you're ready to fight, it might be too late to do anything.

I mean if you're a lawyer and took a client ten years ago this administration doesn't like you might end up with an EO naming you nineteen times and all but declaring you an enemy of state.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/addr...

And all this dysfunction has built up in peaceful times. Now if the system receives a genuine shock, things can go downhill fast.

Maybe there's something true to the "bad times -> good people -> good times -> bad people -> bad times" cycle after all.

If you don't think there is a fight, then you aren't fighting. Once you start doing something you will naturally connect with other people who are doing something.

> If you spent the last decade being fundamentally wrong about the gravest threats to speech in America, these are clever ways to rewrite history to give the impression that you were right all along.

Funnily enough the author here is attempting revisionist history himself by claiming that his side's prior misdeeds were justified all along because of the overreaction of the opposing extreme once they came into power. Instead, i would argue that opposing extremists (the left author who appears to be a denialist for leftist problems, and also trumpers on the opposite extreme) are symbiotic, actually propping eachother up in the long term and indeed, contributing to the problem.

I think he anticipated this argument which is why he wrote this block of text like a "No really, we were justified censoring and discriminating against people all those years, look what happened see!" as if he wasn't part of the cause. Sorry, not buying such a weak argument.

Trump et al wouldn't be able to make such weak free speech arguments work either if their opposition hadn't been using their power for a decade to censor everyone they disagree with in a historic purity spiral. Free speech matters. Neither authoritarian left or authoritarian right are good stewards of it. This is not news. But the left handed trump this point on a silver platter.

When did we have an “authoritarian left” government threatening to revoke visas and permanent residencies over wrongthink?

I think it’s important to look at the issue as a systemic one, not just about the current administration.

For decades, we have delegates all this legal authority to the president with few real checks on the offices power.

Eventually a Trump/Musk would happen.

How does that help us figure out what to do now?

Like a lot of countries, the constitutional set of checks and balances was predicated on the fact that the majority of those involved were basically trying to "do the right thing". It's effectively a state-level gentleman's agreement, where it is assumed that any bad actor is in the minority, and can be dealt with while they remain the minority.

This falls apart if they're not the minority - i.e. you failed to deal with them while they were a minority. There were levers designed expressly to deal with things like this - impeachment, etc. - they weren't used because one side thought that it would play out in their favour. As they will probably learn, it plays out in nobodies favour.

While I won't claim there are countries that are immune to the effects of persistent grifting, the speed at which US was taken over is quite surprising for a European. In most liberal democracies there just is no single person with even half as much power, as the US president has over his country.

Agreed - I'm also a European (well, geographically, no longer EU unfortunately).

Well, it was a strength as long as people wielding such power acted at least a bit morally and with higher purpose than their petty egos. But now it shows its weakness.

But things would have to get much much worse (and they probably will) before US population in general steps down a notch from that pedestal of 'US is the greatest and most free country in the world yadayada' and admits that well, we've fucked up and how to make sure this won't happen again.

If there would still be a way to correct all this after his term/death eventually since he won't give up power easily, which I sincerely don't think will be the case anymore.

>While I won't claim there are countries that are immune to the effects of persistent grifting, the speed at which US was taken over is quite surprising for a European

That's because you guys get the CNN 5min recap version of American politics and therefore you didn't see the discontent that's been brewing since the 00s when US was sufficiently annoyed with establishment types to elect a young(er than the typical federal political) black guy who ran on a platform of change.

The populists will continue to win elections until morale improves.

As with damn near everything else seriously wrong with this country, the trouble is the two-party system. A real fix requires fixing the constitution so our government can stably support several viable parties rather than two, forcing coalition-building after the election.

If we had two parties for the anti-abortion voters, the “come and take them” folks, et c, to vote for without throwing their votes away, things might look very different now. Trump’s this powerful because he exploited weaknesses in one of the two “tents” and captured the whole thing, it would have been far harder for him to get so far if there were another party palatable to the right.

Unfortunately, the two-party systems serves those two parties well, and also serves the rich better than a more multipolar system (it’s easier to deal with), so this is a flaw that we cannot practically fix.

You had insane levels of checks and balances. You just never had a way to get the population to recognize a home grown propaganda campaign designed to gut your systems and overcome your intelligence.

There are allegations that the Perkins and Coie firm abused their access to a SCIF in order to make unauthorised queries targeting Trump campaign members during the run up to the 2016 election.

The full text of the executive order is available here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/addr... and mentions removing access to a SCIF:

> The Office of Management and Budget shall identify all Government goods, property, material, and services, including Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, provided for the benefit of Perkins Coie. The heads of all agencies providing such material or services shall, to the extent permitted by law, expeditiously cease such provision.

It has also been publicly documented from court transcripts that contractors were making unauthorised queries but I don't believe it has ever been released who the contractors were or who they were targeting. Hopefully, if this is the reason for removing SCIF access the current government is able to make these documents public without redaction. Though, the whole thing could just be a conspiracy theory generated by people piecing together bits of random information.

I think they are screaming too late. For more than 10 years was known enough that the US government was mass collecting information about everything they could on internet, the Snowden’s revelations was just a milestone on the current state of that back then, and as nothing happened, it continued.

Now we have over that AIs and probably a government openly willing to use that against you, but that was always a possibility all this time. The future is open, the records are forever. And what we did all this time? Just put in photos, videos and text what can be used against us under some future policy, and shared it with them.

There is a point where we deserve the consequences. And yes, even of this very message.

None of this is necessary to have an authoritarian government. Just some lawsuits and government inquiries.

Inversely you can also have a government that collects everything and doesn’t wield it this way.

The two issues are not actually that intertwined.

>Inversely you can also have a government that collects everything and doesn’t wield it this way.

No you can't. It's only a matter of time.

I’m not advocating for it, so don’t strawman me.

I’m saying it has approximately nothing to do with the actual issues we face today.

I.e. it’s just as relevant for me to say “this is why you don’t give governments firearms! An authoritarian one will turn around and shoot its own people!”

Like yeah, sure it seems likely. Relevant to today? Would today’s conditions have been averted if we had never armed the government? No.

Is it dangerous for the government to collect everything on the internet? Yes! Is there any evidence that capability and “habit” is actually contributing to the chilling effects described in the article? Nope!

As seen in GP’s comment, tech world’s fixation on high-tech super surveillance distracts from the how authoritarian regimes actually tend to exert control over their population. Like, in reality versus in science fiction (again, not that surveillance is good or neutral on this topic, but that it is not at all necessary).

I didn't say you advocated for anything.

I literally quoted you and said the quoted statement was straight up wrong.

“It’s only a matter of time” -> not relevant to this conversation about what’s happening right now then, right?

Then we’re in agreement.

No, we're not in agreement. Only caring about "the current situation" is exactly how we got here. We've been vesting power in the executive for decades. A little here for the environment. A little there because drugs. A little more because terrorists. And so on and so on for every single issue. And every step of the way shortsighted people have said it's not a slippery slope and made all manner of excuses because their specific interest was being served. And now we're reaping what decades of shortsighted people like you have sown.

The way we structure our government needs to be architected on a longer timeline than "the current crisis".

And BTW that's one hell of an edit on the prior comment and the whole schtick about rubber hoses vs technology misses the point about technology being a force multiplier which has huge implications for political will. The fact that the NSA can read everyone's emails cheaper than the Stasi can read everyone's literal mail just means the expenditure is smaller awareness is smaller and the endeavor costs less political capital. Dangerous things (like reading everyone's email) need to be expensive.

Likewise, having a standing army is dangerous.

How much airtime do we want to give that topic on this here thread about current distortion of our democracy through totally distinct mechanisms?

Not sure who you're arguing against on the propriety or danger of NSA's capability, but it ain't me.

The slippery slope fallacy is critical for enabling the absolutist thinking that keeps these types going.

The creation of technology didn’t create the people who would misuse it.

I’ll give an example to illustrate how this defeats the point of the submission.

Submission “we’re seeing chilling effects because students dont want to take the risk of having a record of discussion about government.”

Comment: “We’ve known things are getting worse, and this technology in the wrong hands would be harmful, we should have done something 10 years ago”

Here we can substitute anything from the invention of letters to computers to AI, as the technology in question.

I have one question about one:

> Public employees are illegally

> purged if they are viewed as

> disloyal to the new regime.

My understanding of how the U.S. government works is that the President functions as the CEO of all federal employees.

Is this all about Schedule F executive order which was rescinded by President Joe Biden on January 22, 2021?

I want to have an intellectually honest discussion about this:

- Why are these firings considered illegal? What is the legal argument?

- Why do we believe the President cannot hire or fire federal workers at will? What legal precedent or framework governs this?

If our system is designed in a way that allows the above and we dont like it, shouldn’t we work to fix it? After all, Congress—specifically the House—is the only branch with the power to write laws.

So if you don’t agree with Executive Order XYZ, let’s propose a law to address and fix it.

Would love to hear thoughtful perspectives on this.

> - Why are these firings considered illegal? What is the legal argument?

There's a lot here and you should really take the time to learn about it for yourself than relying on random Internet comments to summarize, but in short:

- Federal employees in general have protections about being fired without process

- Most of the employees being fired are probationary employees who lack such protection. Note how the term is always "fired" not "laid off". There's a reason for that, these people are being fired "for cause", being told their performance is not up to par to avoid the beurocratic overhead of a structed layoff. Misusing for cause termination like this is not even legal for a private employer to do.

- Congress controls spending, and the Executive is generally obligated to spend the funds Congress has allocated for the purposes they allocated them (see also: Impoundment). Attempting to shut down agencies Congress has setup by firing everyone is generally runs contra to this idea.

- some agencies are setup specifically as independent agencies by Congress. Their heads can generally only be removed either by Congress, or by the President for some form of malfeasance. This sort of makes sense when you think about it. A agency responsible for protecting whistle blowers isn't much good if the president is just going to replace the head until he gets someone who won't protect the ones whistleblowing his malfeasance.

> My understanding of how the U.S. government works is that the President functions as the CEO of all federal employees.

This isn't correct. In a private company the CEO has tons of rule make power. The board doesn't generally set the rules directly instead controlling them by putting the right officers like the CEO in place. In the government however the primary rulemaking power rests with Congress. The Executive branch is doesn't have much (or isn't supposed to, this has been slipping for a long, long time) outside what is delegated by Congress. The Executive is simply charged with executing those laws and directives of the Legislative.

There’s a lot of words but little truth.

- Schedule F employees can be fired without due process.

- Additionally, 5 U.S.C. § 7513 allows for the removal of employees if it promotes the efficiency of the service (basically layoffs - and that is what Trump is doing).

- probation employees can be fired

In short no federal employee is fired unlawfully. But if Im wrong there have to be an example and courts can easily intervene (and they did in some other cases).

> Additionally, 5 U.S.C. § 7513 allows for the removal of employees if it promotes the efficiency of the service (basically layoffs - and that is what Trump is doing).

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7513

They are explicitly not following 5 U.S.C. § 7513, they are trying to do and end run around the requirements (e.x. 30 day notice, opportunity to respond), which you can read in plain English at that link, by firing all probationary employees "for poor performance". Which is why as you note some courts are intervening.

The rest of your points are similarly "a lot of words but little truth"

> The judges who provide the last, best hope of constraining the President and the richest man in the world face a historic wave of threats.

The role of the judges is not to contain the President. It's exactly this idea where each department think that it's their role to stop the President which has lost them their job. You cannot operate a government successfully where large parts of it are actively trying to sabotage you.

What President Trump is trying to achieve is to take politics out of the permanent unelected state. Additionally, at the same time he is trying to find cost savings, because US debt is out of control [1]. The UK [2] and many other Countries are in the same boat. US spending on national debt is about $1 trillion a year [3], and it raises about $4.4 billion a year in revenue [4]. This is okay, as long as the US maintains growth [5]. Encase it wasn't obvious by now, we are scheduled for a massive economic downturn, and it is extremely prudent to reduce spending so that the US can still afford interest payments.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_Debt_as_percentage_of_...

[3] https://www.pgpf.org/article/what-is-the-national-debt-costi...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States

>>Op argues that some idiot is trying to undo dept "Find cost savings" by posting graphs of same idiot pushing dept into explosive leaps higher during their previous term.

> The role of the judges is not to contain the President.

The role of judges is to maintain the rule of law under the constitution. If the president is outside that, the role of judges is to contain the president, just as it is their role to contain anyone else who is outside it.

Sure, but there is a lot of interpretation to be done (hence the need for a judge) - and at the point where judges see their role as interpreting the law maximally in favour of stopping the president, then something is wrong.

The US debt is out of control in large part from Trump himself. He cut taxes without cutting expenses. He needs to either put the taxes back, or cut something real (medicare, social security, military). And thats just to stop the bleeding.

But based on his current trajectory, hell continue his pennywise strategy and just like last time, will raise the debt more than his predecessor.

Simplistically it looks like that, but the US (or any other Country) never used to tax so much. The idea is to go back to a time of high GDP growth and lower taxes. Part of that is spending reduction (i.e. inspecting each arm of the government), and another part is growth hacking.

Another thing to remind ourselves of is that we don't want politicians to make decisions purely from market reactions to policy.

Every old forum and facebook group full of right ringers talking about fishing or whatever has been feeling for close to a decade exactly what the author is feeling now.

I'd say I'm hopeful that things will change now that the shoe is on both feet but I don't have that much faith.

Edit: Since apparently this needs to be explained to some people, nobody is feeling like they can't talk about random boring advertiser friendly interests. People are feeling like they can't talk freely about the kinds of political and social issues that tend to get talked about when you get a bunch of people of a particular bent in one place.

I'm not sure both sides-ism is helpful here. I appreciate the perspective that right-wingers have been feeling this fear, and I think that's real and something that should be taken seriously.

And also, as with so many things trump, he's taking the rhetoric and threats to another planet. There was not a huge list of banned words and books, or keyword-based government purges of content previously. There was no threat of punishment for attorneys representing the "wrong" side in a case. There were no blanket threats of imprisonment or deportation for "illegal protests".

The rhetoric and actions being taken by trump/musk in this regard are FAR, FAR beyond anything we've seen here before at least going back to the red scare.

You're missing my point. My point is that the ability to chill speech, put is on lists, make examples out of the tall nails, etc. is something the government has had and has used. The author is just now complaining because he's only now seeing it applied in his general direction (because academia is establishment adjacent) though not directly at him.

This executive power was built up over decades by the establishment on both sides of the isle in bits and pieces (to be clear, I'm not alleging some conspiracy here, just that this is the result of natural incentives in an expanding government) and now it's being wielded by an outsider populist and this is what happens. Nobody should be surprised by this. When we elected a Lite(TM) populist on a platform of change in '08 and nothing changed this outcome was basically destined.

The fact that the populists we ultimately elected are "simple" billionares who have grand delusions of making the country wealthy through deregulation, short sighted geopolitics and fiscal conservatism is just good luck. We could have done, way, way, way worse. And if these guys don't cause some sort of change in the country's course (for better or worse, probably doesn't matter) we probably will elect another even more extreme one.

> The author is just now complaining because he's only now seeing it applied in his general direction (because academia is establishment adjacent).

This is the only thing I'm really trying to correct here. The author is complaining because of the extreme extent to which it is being applied. Not just that it's coming more generally in his direction now. His initial example happens to be a personal one, but the long bulleted list of other examples he supplies does not appear to be personal to him.

It's not a "wow now that this is happening to me I'm going to start caring" it's a "wow this is happening to huge swaths of people in ways that are much more extreme than I've seen in the past"

The extent is not even a fraction of extreme as what the left has been doing for years. But the author speaks like he was completely onboard with and even endorses that stuff. Hard to take anything he writes seriously after he gives off that impression, while being simultaneously too scared to say it more directly.

Sorry that is just objectively untrue. Unless you’re confusing “the left” as “the government”, somehow.

In what way was the government causing the chilling effects you describe?

What in the absolute hell are you talking about?

People on fishing BBs getting attacked and punished for posting about fishing?

Dude, get a brain scan now. You might have a RFKJr brain worm.

> People are feeling like they can't talk freely about the kinds of political and social issues that tend to get talked about when you get a bunch of people of a particular bent in one place.

By "talk freely", do you mean racism, sexism, etc.? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I remember when I had a pretty serious health problem, went from doctor to doctor and none of them helped and some even made it worse.

I complained about it quite bitterly for about a decade, even after I had resolved it on my own without their help.

This post reminds me of that time of my life. He's not wrong and yet he may look back on this time like I have on my life and think heh, is that really what I spent my time doing? The life I could've been living instead. The life I can be living right now, today and tomorrow :)

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