As a child of the 80's, I welcomed the Internet of the 90's as the wild, wild West. By the 2000's, it opened up possibilities that I never thought possible. I could find so much information, not in my row of encyclopedias, but at my fingertips. I was joining Yahoo groups with like minded people and information seemed to flow so much more freely as I dialed up my AOL and started using email.
In 2009, I was introduced to Facebook, and like many busy moms, I saw it as a great way to both keep connected with friends and family and to reconnect with long lost friends. Others started using it for business or interest groups, with great success. In the past 5 years or so, I have also used it for various groups I have been involved in, but it was still mostly personal, although occasionally I would see something cultural or newsworthy "go viral". It was not until the political season started that I, as a "normie", saw some of the nastiness that the internet had to offer. Comments on news articles would degenerate into ugliness that I had no idea people held in their hearts. A politically oriented post could descend into the depths of incivility. At first I was a bit shocked, but soon I learned not to read comment sections too often and to ignore the nastier of comments. Censorship never crossed my mind.
I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes, but this is when I started hearing rumors of my data being sold, and resold, and even my messages being sifted through for details. As a liberty minded person, I was shocked that a large corporation could do this, but I largely blamed myself for not reading the terms of service more carefully. I stopped posting anything of a personal nature, and my page became bland and uninformative. I used it to follow some people I enjoyed, but nothing more. I had also joined Twitter, but kept hearing of suspensions of people for seemingly minor things, while other egregious posts were allowed to stand. It was then that I realized that ideological criteria were being used for such banning. I decided to take a time out from Twitter. Fast forward to 2017 when the purges began across the social media. We all know how the story goes from here -- Facebook banning conservative news, YouTube and the Adpocolypse, Twitter, and even Google all policing "wrong-think", people getting 'deplatformed" or fired for such. It all seemed so unthinkable, especially in the "land of the free". I saw people silenced, censored, and even imprisoned in Europe (not China or the middle East) for "hate speech", and I have started to fear for the future of our own country. But was this censorship illegal in the United States? If so, could anything be done? Here are some of my first thoughts.
Our founders noted that we had some basic human rights, given to us by our Creator (or by nature of our humanity, if you prefer). These were enumerated in the Bill of Rights, and in the first amendment, first and foremost, there is freedom of speech. Why is this right so fundamental? Because without freedom of speech, we cannot have freedom of thought. As human beings, the way we progress is that one idea is built on many ideas that came before it. Another can then add their idea, and we can come up with something world changing. This is the diversity that pushes us ever forward as a human race. Not diversity of skin color, or ethnicity, or gender, but diversity of thought. Different cultural experiences may add to that thought diversity, but it is only the diversity of thought that propels us towards an ever better future. We must be able to communicate freely, to brainstorm, and most importantly, to be wrong. If we are not allowed to fail, we can never succeed. This is why freedom of thought is so important. Our survival and thriving as a species depends upon it.
Now, our founders noted that we have this right in the Constitution, and in the First Amendment, they noted that the government could not make laws restricting this right (the hallmark of a tyrannical government). So the First Amendment only addresses a small slice of freedom of speech -- noting that the government could not lawfully restrict this speech except in the most severe of cases (direct incitement to violence, or libel, for example). Our Supreme Court has historically been very liberal in interpreting this, repeatedly emphasizing our rights to this crucial freedom. So the Bill of Rights addresses what our government can't do. But private individuals generally have had freedom to do what they wanted. For example, a private school could have a speech code, a private business could have a dress code, etc. In theory, I agree with this. Our liberties as an individual need to be protected, and we have the right to run our businesses as we see fit as long as we are not harming someone else. Others can generally do business elsewhere if they do not agree with our business model. That is, as long as there is an "elsewhere" to go. That is the idea underlying "trust busting", or monopoly laws. That is one issue that needs to be fleshed out and can be another post in itself.
A second unprecedented issue is the way communication is now structured. What happens when a handful of those private companies become the major channels of communication? This is where we stand now. A small number of large and powerful tech companies, which essentially control the public discourse, have decided to impose their own codes, enforce them selectively, and thus alter the conversation significantly. How does this status quo intersect with our abilities to express ourselves? Or the ability to hear a relatively full range of views on a given subject?
In my next post, I am going to post some ideas I have heard which deal with this complicated problem. I look forward to hearing comments.
#InternetBillofRights #censorship #socialmedia
Credits: Header from TenthAmendmentCenter.com