Town squares used to be small so that mobs couldn't get too big. Now the town square is infinite and we are seeing the result.
Maybe in a hundred years we will have sorted out how to maintain free speech but limit the bloodthirsty mob. But in the meantime, we all need to survive through this period while as a culture we figure out the answer.
The only answer I can think of is to opt-out of social media, ignore trolls online and cultivate more meaningful in-person connections.
You might find this article about a blogger in South Korea interesting. The blogger was posting financial analysis and opinion, which was apparently causing disruptions in the market. No one would have known who he was if not for the South Korean system of mandatory Internet user registration. I doubt we will see this in America, but it's interesting to consider.
> Town squares used to be small so that mobs couldn't get too big.
See, that's the sort of thing that must be terribly difficult to write, knowing that thousands were tortured, maimed, and killed by small-town mobs in the US: http://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/
Maybe in a hundred years we will have sorted out how to maintain free speech but limit the bloodthirsty mob. But in the meantime, we all need to survive through this period while as a culture we figure out the answer.
The only answer I can think of is to opt-out of social media, ignore trolls online and cultivate more meaningful in-person connections.