On Amplification

Online speech is structured rather differently than offline speech. One important aspect of this, we argue, is that online speech environments are amplificatory. That is, these speech environments are designed to make the speech act of amplification easy, make amplification of others’ speech a predictable side-effect of one’s own, or both. In this essay, we first clarify what the speech act of amplification amounts to. Then we investigate the design choices of our present online speech environments which serve to promote amplification, and how these lay what we call the ‘amplification trap’ when it comes to responding to bad speech. Finally, we consider some ways that online environments could be re-designed in order to mitigate the amplification trap.