Social media giants may have the right to cancel speech
“Imay not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself,” Oscar Wilde once wrote, at least according to the Internet. If only that were the dominant sentiment in our current public debate over free speech. The right to communicate an opinion, even an unpopular one, is a fundamental freedom that government must respect and individuals should respect if they value their own rights, even the right to be wrong.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Congressmen and women and other elected officials cannot make laws that prohibit free speech or bar Americans from exercising their right of free speech in public forums including those that exist online.
For this reason, former Colorado state representative Bri Buentello filed suit against Congresswoman Lauren Boebert. Boebert blocked Buentello on Twitter thus preventing her “from viewing Twitter account, replying to her Tweets or otherwise engaging with those who interact within the replies to her tweets” according to the suit. It is likely Buentello will prevail. A threejudge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that then-President Donald Trump could not block Twitter users from his account. “First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise-open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees,” wrote the judges. Boebert has two Twitter accounts through which she engages in public policy dialogue and cannot legally block Twitter participants whose opinions are contrary to her own.
Recently Twitter did a little blocking of its own. The social media company suspended Trump’s account and thousands of others. Other platforms including Facebook have suspended the former president’s account and the accounts of his supporters who posted claims that the election results were fraudulent. When frustrated social media users attempted to sign up for Parler, an alternative network, they found Google and Apple no longer provided the app. When Amazon revoked web-hosting services, Parler was forced to shut down until it found another hosting site.
So a politician cannot block a user on social media from her account but social media can block a politician from using his account? Yes. Companies can exclude participants and restrict content according to their guidelines. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter restrict posts that are excessively violent, threatening, pornographic, or exploitive of children. While these commonsense guidelines protect public safety, implementation is far from perfect. My post about the 2019 bomb cyclone that hit Colorado was blocked on Facebook presumably because it contained the forbidden word “bomb.”
If you can’t do something well, do more of it. Lately, social media giants have decided to protect the public not just from dangerous and exploitive material but from disagreement. As private companies, it’s within their rights to do so; but just because they can, doesn’t mean they should.
If social media giants can flag or delete false information about the 2020 election, vaccines, or COVID-19 therapies, what about other false claims? Science affirms hydraulic fracturing is safe, preschool programs have little or no lasting impact on achievement, and sex is binary in mammals. Should those who claim otherwise be censored and banned?
If you assume the new arbiters of truth will always discriminate against those with whom you disagree but never against you, wait around a while. Zeal to silence opposition is not a naturally self-limiting force. As Robespierre discovered when the Committee of Public Safety canceled him from the neck down, such fervor grows beyond its creators’ designs.