Social media limits on free speech necessary, but hard to define
Private companies have right to ban users, but what rules should they be governed by?
However universal we claim them to be, every democracy sets limits on the very rights its constitution declares inalienable.
Many of these limits on democratic rights seem arbitrary. Boundaries often do; yet we still largely respect them. We know, for example, that an illinformed 18-year-old may have a lesser ability to vote than a wellinformed 17 1/2-year-old, yet we understand it is sensible to have a voting age limit.
So while we bicker about precisely which age limit is most appropriate, we generally recognize 18 years as a sensibleenough standard to be tolerable. It functions as an objective, if crude, measure of voter competence even though it violates the individual right of many competent people to have a say in how they are governed, while allowing some incompetent people to influence the life of a country.
We tolerate limits set by private companies even more — because although a company may be powerful, it cannot exercise power in the same way a government can. A social media site can prevent someone from using its platform, but cannot prevent him from speaking anywhere and everywhere. People may not like that the Rhinoceros Party is not invited to participate in the televised federal election debates, but it is understood that broadcasters are not obliged to invite any and all political party leaders.
This all brings us to what is being regarded, in some quarters, as an affront to democracy of the highest order by mere virtue of the matter involving limits, any limits: The words of a malevolent conspiracy theorist are being removed from social media sites and the very notion of democratic speech is supposedly in jeopardy.
Many objections to the corporate shunning of American radio host Alex Jones seem to imply that everyone has the right to door-crash any event they feel like attending. Clearly, a deranged flame-thrower who is not provided with one particular microphone by one particular private actor is not a victim of oppression. A Twitter ban on Alex Jones — should it have been instituted like it was by YouTube and Facebook — would have been the technological equivalent of a bartender saying “you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
But even bars try to find a good reason to kick people out. Social media companies have not set limits on free expression that are generally agreed-upon as good. Censoring speech on the grounds that it is intolerant is a limit not readily accepted as tolerable: as it is not easily measured, it will be perceived as easily abused.
Some commentators have suggested social media companies address the issue of objectivity by using the American First Amendment as the standard by which the legality of speech is judged: If speech constitutes libel according to American law, they should not allow it; if it does not constitute libel, they should not ban it.
But while the largest Englishspeaking social media companies may be American, many of their users are international. If it is important that international social media users accept free speech limits as legitimate, limits should not be organized around one country’s constitution.
Using “hate speech” as a limit is even more fraught; as a legal concept, it varies from country to country.
Social media companies decided early on to limit speech that causes intolerable social harm. In more innocent times, when they were asked only to censor photographs of various body parts, the fallout was minimal. In an era when political conflict erupts over words that seem innocuous to some and violent to others, private companies will want to set standards that are tolerable to both the left and the right by virtue their ability to target either side. Otherwise, their policies will inflame the hate they intend to dampen.
It is clear that social media companies have the right to set limits on the right to free speech. As always, it is less clear precisely what those limits should be.