I was thinking a social media site might be better if it bans the verb “to be.”. It opens the way to crap like “Keith Starmer is a borderline fascist” (quote sci-fi writer Charles Stross) as well as Orwellian phrases such as “Freedom is Slavery”
Most of the ways people regularly dehumanize each other have the structure “X is an insect”, “X is a monkey”, …. You can still do it without “to be” but most people don’t know how.
I like E-prime. I treat it as an extension of avoiding the passive voice. It nudges you to be more concrete about your definitions, who is doing what to whom.
A lot of people would find themselves mute, and that would probably improve the quality of discourse all by itself.
Most of the ways people regularly dehumanize each other have the structure “X is an insect”, “X is a monkey”, …. You can still do it without “to be” but most people don’t know how.