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By David Futrelle
Jordan Peterson, the sulky alt-lite celebrity professor who likes to sue people who disagree with him, has announced the imminent arrival of his new Free Speech Social Media platform Thinkspot, which promises to be the freest free speech venue in human history except that you have to pay for it and if you say something that offends the Peterson fans and oft-banned alt-right weirdos who will likely populate the service, they can downvote your comments until they disappear.
Also, Peterson is saying that there might be a 50-word minimum to comments — designed to make sure that comments are “thoughtful” — so that Nazis who want to post the 14 words will be allowed to but they’ll always have to post them four times in a row.
Here’s how the right wing site Newsbusters described it, drawing the details from a recent discussion between Peterson and stoner podcaster Joe Rogan.
Peterson discussed Thinkspot with podcaster Joe Rogan on June 9, emphasizing a radically pro-free speech Terms of Service. He described that freedom as the “central” aspect saying, “once you’re on our platform we won’t take you down unless we’re ordered to by a US court of law.”
That will be a profound contrast to platforms that ban users for “misgendering” people who identify as trans, or for tweeting “learn to code” at fired journalists.
Well, with the 50 word comment minimum, they’ll actually have to write:
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to code.
Learn to.
Clearly this will encourage only the most thoughtful of discussions.
As for the downvoting thing, Newsbusters explains that
All comments on the website will have a voting feature “and if your ratio of upvotes to downvotes falls below 50/50 then your comments will be hidden, people will still be able to see them, if they click, but you’ll disappear.”
Obviously this whole thing is going to be a smashing success, as right-wing “free speechers” love it when algorithms hide their comments from view, and they don’t consider this censorship at all or yell about it endlessly or anything.
Peterson has apparently got a bunch of true a-list free speech warriors lined up to beta test the “anti-censorship platform,” including, well, himself; failed-comedian-turned-alt-right-booster Dave Rubin; celebrity “skeptic” and alleged rapist Michael Shermer; and YouTube blabber/rape joker Carl Benjamin, a.k.a. “Sargon of Akkad,” a.k.a. “Carl of Swindon,” recently in the news for his disastrous campaign for the European Parliament, which went so badly that it kind of took down the entire UKIP party with it.
So basically, the consummate control-freak Peterson is asking the prickliest assholes in the world of social media to pay him money to use a platform that allows their political enemies to downvote their comments until they vanish. I really can’t imagine anything going wrong here.
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