When we're talking about someone other than the government, the answer to "who decides which speech will be restricted?" isn't complicated. It's the person who owns the venue. To tell someone that they shouldn't manage what people do and say in their establishment is bizarre.
If a cafe owner doesn't want to hear politics in their place, that's up to them. It's not their job to stop and think "Oh my, what if the place across town forbids it too? Where will the poor political coffee drinkers go?" They own the place. It's their call.
What's a more likely scenario, though? Why would a cafe owner forbid a type of speech in their place? Because it was disruptive. Because it made some of his customers uncomfortable or hampered his business. Maybe it got too loud. Maybe someone said "I wish they wouldn't serve those people" when one of those people was ordering a drink.
Is the cafe owner "chasing hate away to hide in the dark" when they boot that person? Or trying to run a safe, welcoming, and pleasant business for their customers? What if the offender is begging for money? Is it okay to kick them out because it's not political speech?
Is it their job to confront intolerance? How does that work? Instead of booting the person say "Don't say that! That's not nice!" and then serve them another cup of coffee the next day so they can do it again?
It's entirely up to Substack to decide what speech they want to allow or disallow. It's their right to have the weak and self-contradictory policies they've chosen. Just like it's okay for Substackers (and ex-Substackers) to say they don't want to hang out in a cafe that serves Nazis.
The Internet isn't a book. Books can't follow you. Books can't figure out where you live. Books can't make it impossible for you to read your timeline because they stuff it with racial/sexual/religious slurs. Books can't slide into your DMs.
The Internet is a cafe. It's a shopping mall. It's a series of interconnected public squares. And unlike the physical world, we can have s many public squares as we want. Telling people that they're wrong to curate what is and isn't said in their square because they're failing some intellectual test is, at best, specious.
When we're talking about someone other than the government, the answer to "who decides which speech will be restricted?" isn't complicated. It's the person who owns the venue. To tell someone that they shouldn't manage what people do and say in their establishment is bizarre.
If a cafe owner doesn't want to hear politics in their place, that's up to them. It's not their job to stop and think "Oh my, what if the place across town forbids it too? Where will the poor political coffee drinkers go?" They own the place. It's their call.
What's a more likely scenario, though? Why would a cafe owner forbid a type of speech in their place? Because it was disruptive. Because it made some of his customers uncomfortable or hampered his business. Maybe it got too loud. Maybe someone said "I wish they wouldn't serve those people" when one of those people was ordering a drink.
Is the cafe owner "chasing hate away to hide in the dark" when they boot that person? Or trying to run a safe, welcoming, and pleasant business for their customers? What if the offender is begging for money? Is it okay to kick them out because it's not political speech?
Is it their job to confront intolerance? How does that work? Instead of booting the person say "Don't say that! That's not nice!" and then serve them another cup of coffee the next day so they can do it again?
It's entirely up to Substack to decide what speech they want to allow or disallow. It's their right to have the weak and self-contradictory policies they've chosen. Just like it's okay for Substackers (and ex-Substackers) to say they don't want to hang out in a cafe that serves Nazis.
The Internet isn't a book. Books can't follow you. Books can't figure out where you live. Books can't make it impossible for you to read your timeline because they stuff it with racial/sexual/religious slurs. Books can't slide into your DMs.
The Internet is a cafe. It's a shopping mall. It's a series of interconnected public squares. And unlike the physical world, we can have s many public squares as we want. Telling people that they're wrong to curate what is and isn't said in their square because they're failing some intellectual test is, at best, specious.