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A "digital town square" is a race to the bottom, as is the idea that "the solution to bad speech is good speech." Let me know if you'd like to know why.

Sadly for her, our current reality kills her argument in favor of a digital town square. Elon has enabled the con artists, racists, and Nazis to drown out any sort of existence in that town square. And she still chooses Elon’s hate filled universe. That’s why she’s being called out.

British person in America here. She does have a silly British name. Her references suck shit too.

The most important "British context" is that for self-important intellectual masturbators in Britain, transphobia is regarded as "brave truth telling that should be rewarded" and on BlueSky that same transphobia will get you yelled at and socially ostracized. That's what she's complaining about.

I'm one of those Brits that has moved across in earnest in the past six weeks. It's nice over here, I wish it had more people who engage with financial journalism, but hopefully that will come. But Jemima has a point on the echo chamber, particularly i/r/t the glorification of block lists. (7/11)

You don’t have to say ‘British’ every time you can just say ‘bad’

I mostly agree with your defense of the piece and criticisms of Bluesky's reaction, but if you can deny the unintended hilarity of "Stokes Newington Drinks Party" I'm not sure the internet is the place for you. It's amazing. Making fun of something like that should binds all of humanity

"I should not know who Pete Buttigieg is" made me snort my coffee over my new shirt, thanks so much Robert.

Don't you think tons of people not getting her snooty British references suggests this place isn't exactly the echo chamber she assumed?

Her references about posh dinner parties aren't British references, they're well off London journo ones.

oh, we are all too aware that the recent influx brings along quite a few of knife crime island's lowest-density éminences blanc; that's the thing, ennit, we don't much care for TERFs or the hard-of-thinking

Surely Jemima is a well-known name in the US (not one without controversy though)?

I think what is really making people angry is that what she is actually complaining about is that TERFs are defenestrated from this platform pretty quickly

I suppose we wouldn't have mocked her very insular British references as much if the whole piece hadn't been her lecturing *other* people for their siloed perspective and if she hadn't made a point of pushing her parochial references on us in screenshots of a firewalled article.

"We should have a town square, not a walled garden" "This is just for me mates" Ok, Chief.

STFU you Nazi tosser. We're here too and we get it. She's another TERF witch with a lady boner for 70-year-olds that shit themselves. You're a dishonest prick.

Ironic also that the neoliberal behemoths completely fail to understand that their 'Markets' god is just another face of Demos, the people.

again, not irony. swing and a miss

See, I'd be interested in reading a treatment of that point, because I very much disagree -- not about BlueSky, per se, but about the desirability of a "digital town square", which I think is in fact deeply undesirable.

It amuses me that this never seems to get addressed by anyone defending the "twitter is the town hall" bullshit.

I'm so sick of people with no skin in the game when it comes to schools of thoughts that are threats to marginalized groups existence arguing that letting those ideas out into the open is actually good for everyone.

which is it, 'theoretical' -- that is, never existed -- or 'no longer exists' my goodness you self-congratulatory bin of wankers seem incapable of the most trivial mentation as everyone else has the 'be more explicit' bit handled in regards you, i shan't bother

The assumption that BlueSky is a walled garden is being made without support both by you and by her. Her article doesn't explicitly state it but the only reason she mentions is that Nazi content isn't tolerated. So that's what people latched into. If that wasn't meant that's just poor writing.

From your long screed that is clearly arguing that far-right extremists need to be listened to, it is clear you work for the Fascist Times. No decent person is interested in hearing your opinion on anything Nazi appeaser.

I kinda think #1 does need explanation

2) There were pillories, beatings, excommunications and other regulations that made those town squares nazi-proof, unless the town liked nazis, then they were jew-proof. Never in human history has there been a public venue where people were not disciplined for unpleasant views and attitudes.

1) There were no other communication tools to speak of. No phones, no cars. The town square was the only place to see people you don't already know.

“Some people prefer a more enjoyable social media experience to a digital town square where they have to see engagement farmers posting videos of people getting killed as well as actual Nazis saying Hitler was right”. Damn bro, you got me with that one.

But you can argue everyone who prefers X to Bsky must also be aware of the risk of being exposed to racist content. So the same 'logic' could and presumably should be applied to all of those people too.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-BV...

Part of the problem is that she didn't argue *anything* coherently. X is terrible, but also bsky should be more of a "town square," but also a "town square" without Nazis may not be possible, but there's *definitely* something bad about bsky users liking this space. ... OK?

At the risk of stating the obvious, she noted racist hate speech on X and deemed the result to be superior. Do you really find it ‘strange’ that people extrapolated the 2 implications listed, or are you being disingenuous?

You should really read the piece before you try to defend it.

I feel like mild critics like myself think that if we give credence to her beliefs in this instance: to wit, there’s not enough racism on Bluesky, we’d be given credence to her other beliefs: to wit, trans people should not exist

That "Stoke Newington drinks party with the truffle flavoured crisps" analogy trolled us, the target audience beautifully. It succeeded in generating more engagement than its rather bland and innocuous "serious" themes would otherwise have merited.

Maybe you could post through it?

Any other day a white guy avatar tells an entire social site to search "Jemima" and it probably isn't anything to do with whatever this tempest in a teapot is.