Elon Musk’s Free Speech Arguments Fall Flat
By Malena Dailey
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is the latest development in the battle over the moderation of online content, but his free speech arguments fall flat in the face of how users today interact with social media.
Trump-style conservatives have jumped at the chance to support Musk in his rebranding of Twitter as the “de facto town square.” After all, they’ve been trying, and failing, to replace Twitter with platforms tailored specifically to the tastes of right-wing populists who feel they’ve been censored online. They’ve also been demanding an end to liability protections for sites that remove harmful content like hate speech, threats of violence and the conspiracy theories that fester on the internet. What this mentality fails to grasp is that Twitter isn’t a public place where speech is constitutionally protected, but rather a private business. Allowing dangerous content such as Russian misinformation or conspiracies of a stolen election to thrive displays the most corrosive effects of social media to our society and democracy and, at the end of the day, is not a business model that is attractive to the everyday social media user.
This is best illustrated by thinking about the purpose served by internet platforms. The concept of internet exceptionalism describes regulation of the internet in ways that are inconsistent with the regulatory precedent set for comparable offline situations. This includes regulating Uber differently than taxis or imposing age requirements for websites that are not present in other types of media. In an era where much of our time is spent on the internet, we can consider how this applies to other places in which we spend our time. In 2021, 85% of Americans said they were online every day, and 31% described themselves as being online “almost constantly.” AI-based innovations like the Metaverse hope to capitalize on this trend, by expanding the scope of social and work activities that can be done virtually. In light of this, a modern interpretation of internet exceptionalism might compare how we view social media to how we view physical locations where we spend our time.
Imagine that you walk into a retail store and someone is shouting obscenities, causing a tense and hostile atmosphere. That’s bad for business, and store employees will reasonably ask the shouter to leave to ensure the safety and comfort of their customers. No one accuses the store of censoring free speech. When thinking about speech on Twitter and referring to it as the modern public forum, it’s important to remember that these same principles apply. Twitter is a private entity which opens itself to the public. Not only does the company or platform get to decide what kind of environment they want to cultivate in their own space, but there is a level of responsibility to not inundate users with harmful messages, spam, or false information. The average person does not want to spread things like misinformation, and a product which does nothing to prevent a user from the potential to do so is a hard sell to a mainstream audience.
However, with the reach of social media platforms, the need for this corporate responsibility to keep users safe is heightened. It isn’t one person in a store disturbing the 10 people around them, it’s one post that has the potential to expose millions to unsavory content. There is precedent for online platforms which have spurned content moderation — and the results have been rather abhorrent. Parler, perhaps the most well-known of the right-wing attempts at a “free speech” social media platform, quickly became a hotbed for racism and conspiracy theories. After pro-Trump mobs organized with the help of Parler stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, the platform was kicked out of the Apple and Google app stores. Unchecked, misinformation spreads faster than factual news on social media, a practice that lends itself to extremism as algorithms feed continue to feed confirmation biases. By pulling back on moderation practices in the name of free speech, platforms render users less prepared to face these kinds of extremist threats.
Ultimately, while it is unclear what exactly Musk’s vision of “free speech” looks like for the future of Twitter, in an information economy struggling to keep up with the impact of misinformation, polarization, and extremist content, it is naive to say that there is no responsibility by online spaces to keep users safe. The fallacy promoted by Musk that free speech on social media is in line with democratic values presents a fundamental misunderstanding of how people interact with content online. It ignores the potential for foreign actors to take advantage of a platform’s reach to purposefully spread false stories, a threat which has been acknowledged by both platforms and governments. It assumes that everything on the internet is both accurate and productive to the democratic discussion, rather than inciting further polarization and factionalism.
If we must treat social media as a public square for information sharing as Musk would like us to, we need to understand the role online platforms play in our society, avoiding the missteps of an internet exceptionalist mindset, and instead protecting online users the way we would want to protect individuals in a true public square.
Malena Dailey is a Technology Policy Analyst for the Progressive Policy Institute.
