Principle vs Politics, and Big Tech Censorship

In response to this dreck from Reason


There's two ways to address any issue: 

From a political perspective

From a principled perspective


The problem with the political perspective is that your arguments only work with people who are more or less on your side


The problem with the principled perspective is that it imposes boundaries and limits on you and your future behavior, and your past behavior imposes further limits


When the issue of big tech censorship came up, Reason / Volokh could have gone with the political argument:

Look the people being censored are "not our sort", our social circles don't like them, we find them embarrassing, therefore screw them, let Twitter / FB / Google censor them, we don't care


This would have been an honest argument on their part, but it would have harmed their self image of being righteous and principled people


So they went for the "principled" argument:

Look, it's their company, you have no right to be on their platform, they can kick you off for any reason they want, they can even flat out lie about it, and you have, and should have, no recourse.  in fact, you're a bad person for attacking the techs for this.


But the bill has now come due on their "principles".  Because if that principle applies to Alex Jones, Donald Trump, or any of the thousands of others who've been kicked off Twitter / censored (New York Post), then it absolutely applies to Reason.


Which means that when Reason publishes “the decision to remove this video illustrates a disturbing, censorial trend that has accelerated in the age of COVID” they're in diametric opposition to every single one of their previous "it's their platform, stop demanding they must carry you" articles.


If what they're doing is "disturbing", then people have every right to speak out against it, to try to stop it, to try to get the laws changed so they can no longer do it (unless you're going to try to claim that Twitter has a Constitutional right to Section 230).


Since that wasn't the Reason / Volokh position a week ago, this article is sleazy hypocritical garbage.


And I'm gloriously happy that Reason is now getting what they wished on others

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