Twitter had a policy against misgendering and had locked her out of her account several times before banning her. If this is something Meghan thinks is worth getting banned over, that's on her. Most people just don't care what pronoun somebody wants to be called, so the non-asshole thing to do is to just use their preferred pronoun.
> so the non-asshole thing to do is to just use their preferred pronoun.
I agree. I completely agree. I myself call the transgender people in my life by their preferred pronoun.
I also find compelling someone's speech by threat of banning them to be disgusting. Especially when there's a block button available. If you don't like what someone's saying, you can literally ignore everything they say.
Herein lies the conundrum for me - for, what seems to be, an increasingly large group of people, its not enough to simply stop interaction with people they don't like, those people have to be removed from the landscape altogether. I just do not see this ending in any positive way.
Blocking does not scale if you interact with a lot of people (see many famous examples of celebrities quitting Twitter over harrassment), which is something Twitter would obviously want its users to do. To make it easier, it makes absolute sense to me for Twitter to enforce clearly defined civility rules.
> Blocking does not scale if you interact with a lot of people (see many famous examples of celebrities quitting Twitter over harrassment), which is something Twitter would obviously want its users to do.
This seems to be viewed as a sort of "bug" of scale; I see it as a feature. If you become extremely popular and your voice is amplified, you're going to have to contend with being criticized and scrutinized to a greater degree.
I fall into the Sam Harris & Joe Rogan Greater Internet Reply Theory: "Don't read the comments. You can't read the comments." Jamie Foxx said it best on why you don't need to read them, "Sometimes the comments'll get in that ass."
I will simply never agree with removing someone for the content of their speech. I do think that you eventually reach a point of harassment (for example, if you reply to every single tweet of someone you don't like with, "You're a cunt."), but by-and-large, a lot of the "problems" simply result in people not being able to ignore others, either by using a button on a website, or just by sheer willpower of not looking at a comment.
Her speech was not compelled. She was removed from twitter. She wasn't unpersoned. She isn't in a gulag. Stop hyperbolizing and your concerns get a lot less concerning.
That you're equating being removed from twitter with being physically threatened is telling. They aren't comparable. A physical I threat of violence is compelling, yes, in a way that being removed from a website isn't. She could post the same thing on HN, right now. So compelling!
Good. It should be telling. I'm all-in on free speech. I support the right of everyone, anywhere, to say whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as it adheres to the First Amendment.
Chomsky said it best: "If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”
And you're welcome to hold that view. But conflating threats with 1st amendment protected action is dumb.
And yes, Twitter, under the first amendment, is free to associate with whomever they want (or to refuse to associate with them)! Twitter isn't compelling Meghan Murphy to do anything anymore than than twitter is, at this moment, compelling me to give them my wallet.
On the other hand, if you said "Give me your wallet, or me and my 9 associates here will punch you in the face," you'd be committing a crime.
That's the difference between being kicked off twitter and punching someone in the face. One of them is a crime. No matter how purely you uphold the principle of free speech, it doesn't make sense to compare someone who doesn't share those values to a criminal.
