Online companies have duty to limit platforms
The U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from interfering with your freedom of speech, but that does not mean anyone is obligated to listen to you.
Newspapers are not required to publish your carefully crafted letter to the editor. Social media sites can politely reject your brilliant insights. And your family is not obligated to bathe in your wisdom during Thanksgiving dinner.
Your employer can even fire you for saying anything he or she finds objectionable. Censorship? Yes. Illegal? No. The First Amendment only guarantees that the government will not stop you from expressing yourself. No Pentagon censor reviewed my reports from Iraq before they were published. The FBI is prohibited from censoring conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ claims about the Sept. 11 terror attacks or whether the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting took place.
Once you have your say, though, nothing protects you from the potential consequences of your speech, except maybe a good lawyer. Others may denounce you. Groups may ban you. And if your speech is libelous, defamatory or could
immediately instigate violence, some publications face legal consequences if they give you a platform.
Courts have long held newspaper publishers responsible for what appears in their pages, whether it is journalism, commentary or advertising. That’s why you won’t find clear cases of libel, Russian disinformation or Ku Klux Klan announcements in the newspaper. We are responsible for what we print.
Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, though, have claimed exemptions to libel and defamation laws under the Communications Decency Act of 1992. Some members of Congress are rightly considering lifting those privileges.
Early internet pioneers convinced Congress that to encourage the sharing of information, service providers should be free from liability for the content their customers posted. Even before the world wide web, no one thought providers like AOL could keep track of every post.
What seemed like a good idea then, though, now appears naïve.
Internet trolls use social media sites to ruin people’s lives, as Jones has done to Sandy Hook parents by accusing them of fabricating their children’s deaths. Foreign intelligence services routinely use social media sites to destabilize nations around the world and promote bigotry and division.
Walking a fine line
Facebook, Apple, Twitter and other sites that facilitate such behavior are feeling the blowback, even if there are no legal repercussions. Some CEOs are trying to clean up their content before the government requires it.
The reason for last month’s drop in Facebook’s stock price was CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledging that the company will spend a lot of money hiring people to keep nefarious actors from leveraging his website to make the world a more hateful place.
Yet he is struggling to find the right balance when it comes to censorship. Zuckerberg said he would not ban Holocaust deniers, but he did follow Apple CEO Tim Cook’s lead in removing Jones’ hate speech.
Many lawmakers doubt social media sites will effectively police themselves and want to hold website owners to the same standards as newspaper and magazine publishers for the content they carry.
Sen. Mark Warner made the case in a recent white paper. He would also like the U.S. to follow the European Union’s lead and require sites to gain express permission from users before using their data for commercial purposes.
Other nations have proposed stricter limits on free speech itself. Germany passed a law in 2017 banning hate speech, terror-related items and false information from the internet. Israel wants to remove social media profiles and posts from people it deems criminals. Russia may punish sites that don’t delete posts that the government declares inaccurate.
Those measures have no place in the U.S., but they reveal the growing frustration with corporations that generate more revenue than most nations.
‘All civilizations have rules’
Jones, who broadcasts from Austin, decries the loss of his YouTube channel and the most important distribution channels for his podcasts.
He is calling on supporters to buy more of his merchandise and visit his website to fight censorship. But what’s happening to him is not a violation of the First Amendment.
How long his business will survive depends on the outcome of the defamation lawsuit brought by aggrieved Sandy Hook parents. If they can convince a court that Jones deliberately spread lies that hurt them, Jones will be out of business.
The ultimate solution for hate speech, though, is for the public and businesses to shun Jones and his ilk for the damage their lies — their free speech — does to our society. The terms of service for Jones’ InfoWars website elegantly explains why.
“You are a guest here. It is not censorship if you violate the rules and your post is deleted,” Jones warns visitors. “All civilizations have rules, and if you violate them you can expect to be ostracized from the tribe.”