David Smalley asked a question on Twitter last night:

If something is good in principle, and then becomes abused, how does one criticize the abuse without the Outrage Brigade accusing the critic of being against the original good thing? — David Smalley (@davidcsmalley) January 23, 2018

I’m not sure “How do I criticize without being subject to criticism myself” is quite the right frame of mind for the question, but there’s a decent question in there. So, assuming he actually meant to ask, “How do I make it clear that I’m in favor of something while criticizing its abuse?”, here are some tips drawn from my prior writing on giving criticism.

These may seem a bit general, but the point of criticizing something you like should be to improve it. That means you want to make your criticism constructive. How?

Those are the basics. I hope they help, David.