Elon Musk's Twitter Files and Trump tweets complicate free speech
Elon Musk's Twitter Files about Hunter Biden, tweets about Ye, or Trump invite (he's still on Truth Social) complicate free speech and democracy in America.
Last week, Elon Musk promised the world that a treasure trove of internal Twitter documents showing how the social media company had suppressed reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 would be released. These so-called Twitter Files were proof of “free speech suppression,” the billionaire claimed. The document dump, such as it was, turned out to yield little new information. But for supporters, the details are less important than the narrative: another battle in Musk’s grand war to protect and enable “free speech” — seemingly everywhere and anywhere.
It’s an attractive-sounding crusade, especially for those on the political right. But does free speech really need saving?
The essence of the First Amendment was born from the need to protect speech that we hate, not speech we love. The speech we love doesn’t need our protection; rather, it needs protection from people who may hate it and might therefore want to restrict or eliminate it from easy or any access. John Milton’s 1644 pamphlet “Areopagitica” highlighted this difficult goal lucidly, urging that the marketplace of ideas be kept open to everything, so that true ideas would not be kept from the public because they were mistakenly regarded as false.
Of course, Milton assumed that human beings are inherently rational, and able to discern truth from falsity. Thomas Jefferson, an early proponent of the First Amendment, did too. That assumption about human nature has always been risky. In the past few years, it has been put sorely to the test. And in the past few months, that turmoil has been brought to a boiling point by Musk and his own personal conception of free speech, embodied in his acquirement and administration of Twitter.
Elon Musk’s bizarre take on the First AmendmentDec. 6, 202215:05Before we get into that, we should be clear on exactly what the First Amendment does. It says Congress and the federal government — and by extension in the 14th Amendment, any state or local government — cannot abridge or limit speech or the press. Elon Musk, as far as I know, is not part of any government. He’s the owner and CEO of (several) private companies. That means he can pretty much do whatever he pleases with Twitter. He can make whatever rules he wants and break them when he feels like breaking them. This would be essentially true even if Twitter still were a publicly traded corporation. In that case, Musk could be held accountable by the stockholders. But as far as the First Amendment was concerned, he could still do whatever he wanted to — invite Ye back to Twitter, then ban him, and invite him back again.
Rating: 5