While these people are bothersome, the last thing I would want to do is censor them. On the contrary. I want them to see daylight. I want their videos dragged into the middle of the public square where they can be dissected, derided, and destroyed. I want everyone to watch it happen. I want reply posts that rip it to shreds to go viral and the people who might have even given the time of day to that kind of stupid thinking feel foolish for doing so and quietly reform their own positions. 

But not everyone agrees with me. There are people like Nikki Haley who believe that the internet should be a more orderly place where there is no anonymity and any platform that doesn't cater to what she thinks is right should be banned. Chief among those, she believes, is TikTok according to The Hill:

“[W]hen you look at social media, I have long said that we have to ban TikTok,” Haley, a 2024 GOP presidential primary candidate, said on Fox News Radio’s “The Guy Benson Show.” “And if you didn’t know why, there’s another example today.”

“They are posting letters of Osama bin Laden’s letter, the week after the 9/11 attack, and it is the justification for why he did it,” Haley continued. “And so you have a lot of our kids sitting there siding with that, that ‘Oh, America deserved it at that time.’”

Firstly, even if you don't like TikTok, setting the precedent that any platform a politician doesn't like should be banned is a dangerous one, and the fact that a Republican candidate is even suggesting the things that Haley is is appalling. Many people speak under anonymity for a host of reasons and not all of them are bad. 

Besides, I'm not concerned with the identities of those who post online, I'm concerned with their ideas. 

Ideas are one of, if not the biggest, exports of the internet and even if you do ban a platform or expose a person's identity, it's not going to stop that idea from flowing. Platforms ban ideas and words all the time and yet, these words and ideas are expressed somewhere. 

While I can understand a platform wanting to suppress and censor some ideas that actively encourage violence against a race, religion, or person — i.e. "Hey let's get together on 6th Street at 8 p.m. and start murdering whitey" — I think that thoughts and opinions about thing such as letters sent by important figures should be talked about analyzed and debated. 

Why? 

If it's a stupid idea and a person endorses it, and that endorsement is seen by the general public, then it will be obliterated and lessons can be learned. Even people who are against the idea being spoken might learn new insights and reasons why they could continue to disagree or despise the thing being talked about. 

Suddenly, the stupid idea becomes a teachable moment and a learning experience. That idea that would have festered and gained power by being relegated to chat rooms where it wouldn't be challenged is now getting torpedoed with such prejudice that only the truly foolish will believe it. It's less likely to radicalize someone in the safety of the shadowy parts of the internet. 

For an infestation to occur, its beginnings need to be furtive. 

Stop letting the idiots hide away in the dark to become more powerful