It has also brought with it a bag of trouble. Misogynists, anti-Semites, Islamophobes, racists, homophobes – some of them bring the full set. Why is it important that their hate speech not have a platform provided under the guise of free speech?
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Vic Alhadeff, who spearheaded a 2018 campaign which achieved a NSW law against incitement to violence on the basis of race, religion, gender or sexual identity, notes that everything begins with words. “The Holocaust didn’t begin with the gas chambers,” he says. “It began by demonising, marginalising, isolating. So that violence was the next logical step in a gradation of othering. It is a given that free speech is a cherished value; yet so are the democratic principles which, if left unfiltered, it threatens to trample.”
We are at a precipice when it comes to democracy. That sounds like an overwrought claim. But when we watch what has happened in the US it is a reminder that free speech should never be taken for granted.
Humans have survived thousands of years of technological advancements, from inventing the wheel to the train or Twitter. The real question is how do we use them well? How do we use them to improve our humanity.
But you’ll have to excuse me now, I’m busy trying to follow my own sanctimonious advice by shutting down my Twitter account. Now, where’s my bloody password?
Catharine Lumby is a professor of media and communications at the University of Sydney. She is the author of a forthcoming biography on the writer Frank Moorhouse.
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