Rewriting the free-speech equation
Tech platforms flex muscle, should be reined in
“Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.”
— Benjamin Franklin
More than a century and a half before George Orwell wrote about protagonist Winston Smith’s work at the Ministry of Truth in fictional Oceana, the framers of this country’s Constitution made sure our government never had the kind of power over speech, and therefore over thought, that it did in Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
After four years of drafting and debate, delegates from the 13 states in 1791 adopted the Bill of Rights, inspired by Thomas Jefferson and George Mason and drafted by James Madison. It was a clear statement that Americans recently freed of British oppression wanted strong guarantees the new government would not trample upon their newly won rights including freedoms of speech, press and religion.
While the government was expected to protect against foreign and domestic threats, conduct foreign affairs and ensure economic growth, it was not, according to a history of the Bill of Rights by the American Civil Liberties Union, “the government’s job to tell people how to live their lives, what religion to believe in, or what to write about in a pamphlet or a newspaper.”
What the framers couldn’t have predicted was that a new collective “Ministry of Truth” would emerge in this century in the form of a handful of powerful tech companies — Twitter, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon — and the modern-day oligarchs who run them in the chaos, invective and violence of the last election cycle and the runup to it.
These tech giants with billions of users worldwide equal — or exceed — the power of government in some ways. Through their control of the largest platforms hosting public discourse, they have the power to censor speakers and edit what you get to read. And they are exercising that control.
Former President Donald Trump has been banished from Twitter after his incendiary rhetoric claiming the election was stolen helped inspire the Capitol takover by a mob. Many voices claiming election fraud or challenging conventional wisdom and sometimes shifting science on the COVID-19 pandemic have been restricted or banned from social media. Parler, the conservative alternative to Twitter with 2.8 million users, was booted off Amazon’s web servers. Twitter suspended 70,000 accounts linked to QAnon, which touts various nutty conspiracy theories.
The list goes on. For example, PragerU’s Dennis Prager says YouTube (owned by Google) has restricted 56 of PragerU’s 320 video releases, including titles such as “Israel’s Legal Founding” by Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz. Prager says he seldom gets a response as to why restrictions were imposed, although he sort of did after YouTube restricted his video “The Ten Commandments: What You Should Know.” A Google representative indicated perhaps it was because the video referred to murder. Prager wonders: Would the tech censors be OK with the “Nine Commandments” dropping “Thou Shalt Not Kill?”
The companies cite their policies that promote and govern free expression; they prohibit hateful conduct that incites violence or abuse, for example. Some of the content removed is indeed objectionable or even dangerous. And nobody has to be on Twitter or Facebook — except they are a major form of communication in today’s world. The fact is, the companies make their own rules, and their implementation of them appears to be motivated at least in part by their political preferences.
The tech giants point out they are private companies not subject to the restraints the founders placed on government when it comes to free speech. True enough. And given their reach, power and resources, that’s a problem and a threat. There are limits to free speech. You can’t yell “Fire” in a crowded theater. But if anyone gets to decide what you see and hear on mass communication platforms it should be the Congress or the courts, operating within the constraints of the First Amendment — not Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Jeff Bezos.
It is ironic that some of the people who have come forward, like the ACLU, to express concern with Trump’s Twitter ban include Mexican President Andrés Obrador and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said through her chief spokesman that the “right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance and given that, the chancellor considers it problematic that the president’s accounts have been permanently suspended.” Merkel often clashed with Trump, but she at least understands free speech and censorship. A lesson perhaps from German history?
These monopolistic enterprises have virtually unchecked power and need to be brought to heel under anti-trust law. Previous laws give them immunity from lawsuits that publishers face, under the theory they are simply platforms. That clearly isn’t the case given the power they are exercising over content. Congress needs to revisit those laws as part of developing a framework differentiating between truly harmful speech from the obnoxious.
This nation since its founding has put a premium on free speech, and the price of that is tolerating speech you don’t like or distrust. The unlimited power of censorship the tech giants possess is antithetical to that.
It’s worth noting the irritating guy who hawks his pillows on TV has been permanently banned from Twitter for violating its “civic integrity” policy by continuing to insist the election was stolen from Trump. No flagging it as false. No counter argument. A ban.
But Venezualan strongman Nicolas Maduro, who is not recognized as a legitimate president by the United States and most Latin American and European counties, continues to hold forth on Twitter. More than 9,000 extrajudicial killings have occurred on his watch and political opponents jailed. Millions have fled the country. He did rig the election. His backers are primarily Russia, China and Iran. But he’s OK on Twitter while Trump and MyPillow guy Mike Lindell are not.
And that’s something worth thinking about before turning out the lights.