🍑 Free Peach

Forcing me to eat your rotten fruit is not your first amendment right.

I am a Free Peach Absolutist.

Stay with me… it’s important.

Nobody would argue with your right to plant a tree, right? Anyone should be allowed to gather some earth, a pot, some seeds … and grow themselves a peach tree.

And when your tree grows and produces ripe, juicy peaches then I think we’d all agree that no-one should stop you eating them, right? In fact, I would go further and say — you should be allowed to give your peaches to anyone you like. That is your right.

So yes, I believe in Free Peach.

I also believe that if you would like to offer your peaches to others, you should be able to do that too. In likelihood you would probably find a grocer to take on your stock of peaches and give or sell them to others. That’s the beauty of a free society.

So okay: if I believe in Free Peach as a principle then it’s fair to say that I also believe in your right to sell or distribute your peaches as the market will bear. Fair enough.

Rotten Peaches

But what happens when your peaches are rotten … what happens if they ferment?

Are you still okay to sell them on the open market? Peach wine is alcoholic … and that should be regulated, yes? It’s ABV should be known and labelled, it should be manufactured hygienically, it shouldn’t be marketed to minors.

I’m not anti-peach-wine, I’m not anti-alcohol. You should be free to drink and I should be free to sell you my carefully rotted peaches.

But there are standards.

Alcohol is dangerously addictive and acutely lethal if it’s not manufactured properly. In the west it is distributed only under license, it’s illegal to distribute it to under-18s (in America, under 21s!?).

We take rotten peaches seriously. We are still free to make homemade hooch and we’re all free to drink. But we regulate distribution. It matters.

Bootleggers

By now I know you know what I’m getting at here. The issue is not your right to grow, sell or buy peaches — rotten or not — no-one is taking that away.

The issue is about the total lack of regulation around the artificially-monetised distribution of free, dangerous peach wine to minors and peach-wine addicts.

Free speech is just the same.

For all Musk and Zuckerberg’s hype of being free speech absolutists, they’re really showing themselves to be grotty backroom bootleggers of rotten, unregulated, harmful and often downright dangerous rotten speech.

Why?

For Zuckerberg, because it’s politically expedient to bow to the MAGA call for “masculine energy”. As I wrote earlier in the week, he is just obeying in advance.

For Musk, it’s all part of a broader strategy to wrest control of the American state and further his commercial and ideological interests.

Neither of them give a flying fuck about what you say, think or believe. They’re not protecting your rights. They are protecting their own interest and literally nothing else.

Anarchy branded as “Freedom”

The bottom line is this: the concept of “Free Speech” that Musk and Zuckerberg are now selling is snake-oil.

You were always free to say whatever you like … they don’t control speech, they control reach … and those are very, very different things. You can say what you like with or without their help and you always could.

The question is whether or not you have a right to have your hate-speech amplified by an algorithm that is singularly interested in selling your attention to advertisers. They are not interested in what you say, nor are they offering you freedom to say what you like.

They are only interested in deregulation to improve the potency of what they can sell.

They are only working to exploit your propensity to react to hatred.

And at what cost? Probably at the cost of a free and fair society, ironically.

With no regulation of the kind of speech that is artificially amplified across these vast networks we are putting free society at massive risk.

Content that encourages suicide or toxic masculinity or violence against those of a different race or gender or political leaning is all fair game according to Zuckerberg.

Consequences be dammed…

We can’t do much to fix all of this. But you can stop supporting hatred.
For fuck’s sake please stop using Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

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