🐫 Here’s a two-fold thought that’s been bothering me lately (yes, two whole folds):

• no matter how much the most powerful social media platforms insist they have content moderation under control, they do not. It’s too hard, even for them.

• Literally no one, not even the people who make the laws, understand what is means to protect free speech.

Why are these thoughts in my brain? Well, there’s lots of stuff — LOADS, actually. Cloudflare’s very stupid response to Kiwifarms just the other week; the sheer indestructability of Alex Jones; Facebook’s inability to prevent hate speech and misinformation in the lead up to general elections in Kenya; how a few months ago, multiple platforms struggled to contain a video of a white supremacist doing a mass-shooting in a supermarket.

But the main thing that’s set me off is the new Texas anti-censorship law: it’s a serious smack in the face for free speech, the very thing it says it’s trying to protect. Here’s what it does: