June 15, 2021
TAKING LIBERTIES UNCIVILLY:
America's Censored Speech Platforms: How to make our public commons accountable to more than a few controlling shareholders (NADINE STROSSEN, JUNE 14, 2021, The Tablet)
As someone committed to robust freedom of speech for all--including for those who own communications platforms, and those who communicate on them--I am vexed by the monopolistic dominance of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and their increasing restrictions on controversial speech and speakers.On the one hand, I am wary of government interference with the platforms' editorial judgments, including any government compulsion to carry content that they don't want. As the Supreme Court has held in analogous cases, a government requirement that a platform must include speech that it prefers to exclude constitutes a First Amendment violation that is at least as bad as--and maybe even worse than--a government requirement that the platform must exclude speech.On the other hand, I am wary of the unbridled censorial powers that the social media giants have been wielding at an almost unfathomable scale, dwarfing the censorship powers that even some tyrannical governments have exercised. Facebook's most recent quarterly "Community Standards Enforcement Report" reported that each day it removed or restricted (through measures such as warning labels or downranking) approximately 462,000 Facebook and Instagram posts that it considered hate speech.
One of those areas where the LEFT/RIGHT are indistinguishable is the desire to use government power to take over private businesses in direct contravention of the Constitution.
Posted by Orrin Judd at June 15, 2021 7:37 AM