'Elon Musk's erratic behavior does not bode well for the future of free speech on social media,' writes Jacob Mchangama (JMchangama)
But you don’t have to be an Elon “stan” or subscribe to Musk’s half-baked free speech philosophy to worry that free expression isn’t taken seriously enough by global, digital platforms. Legally the protection of free speech is primarily a relationship between government and citizens. But a thrivingdepends on broad societal tolerance of ideas that fly in the face of polite opinion and established orthodoxy.
Indeed, social media companies’ content moderation policies matter. No single government in history has ever been able to exert such extensive control over what is being said, read, and shared by so many people across the world in real time. Two decades ago, the architect of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, argued for a flourishing culture of free speech based on the ideal of on a decentralized Internet and“impos[ing] involuntary filters on someone else…is censorship.” But with the rise of huge, centralized platforms attracting hundreds of millions of users, the dark sides of social media became much more visible. Previously, white supremacists had little reach.
It became increasingly clear that if social media companies hoped to attract and retain a critical mass of users—and advertisers—with very different ideas about what is offensive, hateful, or even true, they would have to more actively police their platforms. They would also have to protect their integrity from bad actors, including authoritarian governments with no qualms about disrupting democratic processes.
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