Twitter can often be a nasty place for somebody with my last name. I’ve been called a “kike,” a “dirty, stinky Jew,” and been given rather detailed instructions on the method I should use to burn myself in an oven. At no point have I ever blocked any of these hostiles from following me, an action people often take to protect themselves against the harassment of other users.
My view was that I never wanted to give them the satisfaction of thinking that they really got under my skin, or the pride (or attention) that comes with being a martyr.
I’ve thought a lot about this recently in the storm of controversy over Facebook’s decision to ban a number of (predominantly right-wing) users from its social media forum.
To start, it is crucial in this case, as with all similar cases, to draw a clear distinction between free speech and open speech.
The concept of free speech, of course, comes directly from the First Amendment of our Constitution, which reads, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.”
[Related: Facebook co-founder urges government to break up social media giant]
There is no exception in the First Amendment for offensive or controversial speech. In fact, if the First Amendment were only meant to protect speech that were widely agreed upon and that didn’t bother anybody, it would serve no purpose, since inoffensive speech isn’t the speech that an empowered government is likely to attempt to regulate.
That concept of free speech only applies within the context of government action. When we’re talking about issues such as cancelling speakers on college campuses, firing people over controversial statements, or in the most recent example, social media companies banning or suspending some accounts, we’re talking about something different. We’re talking about open speech.
Open speech and free speech are certainly relatives. A society in which there’s a general tolerance within institutions for wide open debate, allowing many voices to articulate opinions or vent their anger, is one that’s more likely to maintain legal protections against government control of speech.
But institutions such as news organizations, private universities, or social media forums are under no obligation to provide a forum to any individual or group.
This is why I cannot get behind any effort by conservatives to goad President Trump into having government somehow regulate Twitter or Facebook to ensure that conservatives are fairly represented.
[Opinion: Banning fringe voices from social media only makes them more dangerous]
Twitter and Facebook are private companies and should be left alone. Conservatives complaining about getting kicked off have all the freedom in the world to say what they want in other forums, or to start their own forums. In the past, when conservatives felt their views weren’t being adequately represented by the major media networks, they created newsletters and magazines, they held conferences, they built talk radio, they turned to chat rooms and listservs, and eventually blogs. Lamenting that Twitter and Facebook are so influential and important that they can’t be avoided and must thus be taken on by government is the sort of argument one would expect from a socialist.
All of this having been said, though Facebook is well within its rights to ban whomever it wants from using its forum, it should be much more reticent about banning anybody. The problem is that once you go down the path of regulating speech, it becomes difficult to know where to draw the line.
Conservative complaints about people getting “de-platformed” are less likely to result in social media giants reinstating banned personalities, and more likely to result in the companies feeling the need to compensate by banning controversial voices on the Left. Over time, as pressure campaigns build on both sides, the number of people being banned will inevitably increase.
Doing so will also increase the number of martyrs. Once somebody gets banned, they can suddenly gain attention as a martyr for free speech, thus having the unintended consequence of actually allowing them to launder noxious views, which suddenly become the “forbidden fruit.”
Social media companies instead should establish something akin to a presumption of innocence when considering whether to remove somebody from their sites. If there is a very specific threat of violence, that’s one thing. But the general default should be to allow people to remain on the forum and vent, even if they are spewing what many people would consider hateful language.
