traditionally we regulated free speech by eschewing prior restraint but using torts and the judicial system to impose some accountability ex post.

it was a good balance! lawsuits are risky and costly so you could speak pretty freely, but outrageous threat and defamation were deterred. 1/

but we now have a class for whom lawsuits are not risky and costly, for whom the expense — even if they lose and some anti-SLAPP law hits them — is negligible. and these people are difficult to sue, since a lawsuit can become an all-pay auction in legal expenses, and plutocrats can outbid. 2/

to some degree it was always thus — corporations have long had deep pockets. but the emergence of ideological, aggrieved billionaires who can speak without accountability but punish others for speech they dislike strikes me in practice as a sea change. 3/

i find when i write in places like this i worry much more about Elon Musk than i ever did about Goldman Sachs. (i said a lot of mean stuff about Goldman Sachs!) 4/

plutocrats championing the traditional free speech regime are championing a regime where no meaningful accountability binds them, but they can hold others painfully to account at will or on a whim. 5/

i dislike some of the censorious tendencies of the last decade, even the ones those very billionaires complain about. but “free speech unless you piss off a billionaire” strikes me as imposing a far worse chill than any excesses of wokeness or public health overcaution. /fin