Censorship: Twitter Takeover Totally Panics Political Regime of LeftLibDemSocMediaTechPol

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The First Amendment Option: An Easy Way For Musk To Restore Free
Speech On Twitter

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/04/28/the-first-amendment-option-an-easy-way-for-musk-to-restore-free-speech-on-twitter/

https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1517247388716613634
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519735033950470144

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/05/03/learning-to-love-content-modification-facebooks-new-campaign-should-have-free-speech-advocates-nervous/
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/07/17/the-lethality-of-free-speech-biden-denounces-big-tech-as-killing-people-by-not-censoring-speech/
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/11/18/twitter-ceo-admits-censoring-hunter-biden-story-was-wrong-democrats-call-for-more-censorship/
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/09/29/enlightened-algorithms-democrats-call-for-increased-corporate-controls-to-protect-citizens-from-their-own-dangerous-curiosities/
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3270514-twitter-faces-the-nightmare-of-being-forced-into-free-speech/
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/05/10/free-speech-inc/
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/07/19/the-shadow-state-embracing-corporations-as-surrogates-for-government-action/
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/21/obama-calls-for-tech-regulation-to-combat-disinformation-on-internet.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2022/04/25/elon-musk-twitter-nightmare-progressives/7437546001/
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1_2_7_1_1/
https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/25/23041754/elon-musk-twitter-free-speech-messaging-app
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/11/02/the-case-for-internet-originalism/

Below is my column in the Hill on one way for Elon Musk to
re-introduce free speech values on his newly acquired social media
platform. Pro-censorship advocates like former President Barack Obama
may have given Musk a roadmap for restoring free speech on Twitter.

For free speech advocates, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter could prove
the most impactful event since Twitter’s founding in 2006. The
question, however, is how Musk can accomplish his lofty goal of
restoring free speech values to social media. He first would have to
untie the Gordian knot of censorship in a company now synonymous with
speech control. The answer may be simpler than most people think.
Indeed, anti-free-speech figures in the country may have given Musk
the very roadmap he’s looking for: the First Amendment.

The purchase of Twitter alone will have immediate and transformative
changes for free speech. The control over speech on social media
required a unified front. Free speech is like water, it tends to find
a way out. With social media, there was no way out because of the
unified front of companies like Google, Apple and Facebook. Facebook
is actually running commercials trying to convince people to embrace
their own censorship. This message was reinforced by Democratic
leaders like President Biden, who demanded that these companies expand
censorship and curtail access to harmful viewpoints.

Now this market has one major competitor selling a free speech product.

The fear is that Musk might be proven right and that Twitter could
become larger and more profitable by allowing more free speech.
Facebook has not had much success in convincing customers to embrace
censorship, but it may find shareholders wondering why the Facebook
board (like the Twitter board) is undermining its own product as a
communications company committed to limited speech.

Another immediate change could be the forced exodus of a line of
ardent censors from the company, with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal
(hopefully) at the head of line. Agrawal is one of the most
anti-free-speech figures in Big Tech. After taking over as CEO,
Agrawal quickly made clear that he wanted to steer the company beyond
free speech and that the issue is not who can speak but “who can be
heard.”

However, once such figures are removed from Twitter, the question is
how to re-establish a culture of free speech.

The answer may be in the very distinction used by Democratic
politicians and pundits to justify corporate censorship.

For years, anti-free-speech figures have dismissed free speech
objections to social media censorship by stressing that the First
Amendment applies only to the government, not private companies.

The distinction was always a dishonest effort to evade the
implications of speech controls, whether implemented by the government
or corporations. The First Amendment was never the exclusive
definition of free speech. Free speech is viewed by many of us as a
human right; the First Amendment only deals with one source for
limiting it. Free speech can be undermined by private corporations as
well as government agencies. This threat is even greater when
politicians openly use corporations to achieve indirectly what they
cannot achieve directly.

Corporations clearly have free speech rights. Ironically, Democrats
have long opposed such rights for companies, but they embrace such
rights when it comes to censorship. The Democratic Party embraced
corporate governance of free speech once these companies aligned
themselves with their political agenda. Starbucks and every other
company have every right to pursue a woke agenda. Social media
companies, however, sell communications, not coffee. They should be in
the business of free speech.

Democrats have continued to treat the First Amendment as synonymous
with free speech, as a way to justify greater censorship.

Just last week, former President Barack Obama spoke at Stanford to
flog this false line. Obama started by declaring himself, against
every indication to the contrary, to be “pretty close to a First
Amendment absolutist.” He then called for the censorship of anything
that he considered “disinformation,” including “lies, conspiracy
theories, junk science, quackery, racist tracts and misogynist
screeds.”

He was able to do that by emphasizing that “The First Amendment is a
check on the power of the state. It doesn’t apply to private companies
like Facebook or Twitter.”

Well, what if it did?

The Constitution does not impose the same standard on Twitter — but
Musk could. He could order a new Twitter team to err on the side of
free speech while utilizing First Amendment standards to maximize
protections on the platform. In other words, if the government could
not censor a tweet, Twitter would not do so.

The key to such an approach is not to treat Twitter as akin to
“government speech,” a category where the government has allowed major
speech controls. Rather, tweets are very much as Musk has described
them: akin to speech in “the digital town square.” If the government
could not stop someone from speaking in a public forum like a town
square, Twitter should not do so through private means.

The value to tying private speech to First Amendment jurisprudence is
that there is a steady array of cases illuminating this standard and
its applications.

Such a rule would admittedly allow a large array of offensive and
objectionable speech — just as the First Amendment does in a public
square. That is the price of free speech.

This is, admittedly, not a perfect fit. Twitter needs to protect
itself from civil liability in the form of trademark, copyright and
other violations in the use of its platforms. Moreover, most sites
(including my own blog) delete racist and offensive terms. That can be
done through standard moderation systems or, preferably, optional
filters for users to adopt on Twitter. There are also standard rules
against doxxing as well as personal threats or privacy violations.

Social media companies long had these limitations before plunging
headlong into the type of content-based speech regulations made
infamous by Twitter. Musk can use the baseline of the First Amendment
with these limited augmentations to re-create the type of relatively
open forums that once characterized the internet.

I have long admitted to being a type of “internet originalist” who
prefers precisely the digital town square concept embraced by Musk.
Adopting the First Amendment standards would create a foundation for
free speech that can be tweaked to accommodate narrow, well-defined
limitations.

The greatest challenge is not the restoration of free speech but the
retention of such a site.

Notably, figures like Hillary Clinton have suddenly turned from
advocating corporate censorship to calling for good old-fashioned
state censorship. Last week, Clinton called on the European Union to
pass the Digital Services Act (DSA), a massive censorship measure that
has received preliminary approval. Coming after Musk’s bid for
Twitter, Clinton and others now want to use European countries to
offer the same circumvention of the First Amendment. Rather than use a
corporate surrogate, they would use an alternative state surrogate to
force Twitter to censor content or face stiff penalties in Europe.

Musk will have to fight that battle when it comes. In the interim, he
can rally the public, as he did Twitter shareholders, to the cause of
free speech.