The social media phenomenon seemed at first to represent a magnificent advance for human freedom, extending to the common man the opportunity for expression of his thought to the entire world. Yet what we thought was a new, paradigm-changing degree of liberty is now rapidly being thwarted by vigorous social media censorship carried out in the name of policing offensiveness, and of protecting people from the harm of hearing someone else’s opinion. Social media censors are even expanding their arbitrary enforcement of speech limitations into the realms of political and religious speech. Facebook warnings on RNC ads, YouTube restrictions on PragerU, Twitter censoring President Trump, Facebook “fact-checks”, and now even suspension of Trump campaign ads by Twitter, typify such aggressive censorship. What a stark contrast exists between the heavy-handed intervention by social media censors and the principle underlying the very limited constraints on public speech which the government may impose in accordance with the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court explained just a few years ago in Matal v. Tam:
. . . it is a fundamental principle of the First Amendment that the government may not punish or suppress speech based on disapproval of the ideas or perspectives the speech conveys.1
Since social media now sustains our public discourse to a very great extent, the progressive suppression of conservative speech on social media at will is nothing less than a catastrophe. Conservatives must find and implement effective means for fighting internet censorship – quickly.
Continue reading “Defeating Internet Censorship”