It looks like letting people say anything they want on major social media platforms is only having one major positive effect: a few advertising companies are becoming very rich.

The negative effects include:

- incited violence (gang-oriented gun crime in Chicago is often fanned by social media posts for example)

- bad medical decisions (vaccine/COVID misinformation)

- cancel culture/political manipulation (people taking other people's posts as facts when they are not)

I would like to uphold the principle of free speech and forcing social media providers to be free speech agents even though they are private companies, but it's starting to get hard to defend. I am losing faith that strict adherence to free speech is going to result in a smarter, happier humanity. It might be better if less people speak their mind.