Free Speech: To be or not to be?

Andrew Atkin:

There are three types of speech, of concern.

1. Objective speech.

2. Malicious speech.

3. Illegal speech (slander, defamation, and inciting violence, etc)

Most agree that people expressing an objectively held view should have the right to do so, without government interference. And for good reason. When honest and objective speech goes - everything eventually goes. Suppressing speech is how tyrannies evolve.

However, we can all agree that slander and deliberately inciting violence cannot be legal. 

Where the real debate is today, is with malicious speech. That is when people don't just express an objective viewpoint, but speak to the end of being nasty and hurtful and for the sake of being hurtful. Malicious speech works against objective speech, as it acts as a form of bullying. Already today, people are afraid of expressing an honest opinion out of fear of being slandered and labelled a racist and a bigot, etc.

So here is the question. How do you manage or control for malicious speech? 

Well the last thing you should do is have the government control for it. Because when the government can shut people down in the name of hate speech, they win the legal power to shut down any speech they might choose to interpret as 'hate'. Again, that is how you create a slow-moving tyranny. No freedom of speech means freedom of propaganda, in practice. 

The way to deal with malicious speech is to let it be dealt with in the traditional way - privately. Let private venues control, block and deplatform malicious speakers. As we do, and should continue to do. And name and shame those who are cruel and defamatory.

In saying this, there is a special concern. Google, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are so very dominant as mass-public platforms, that even as private entities they can (and do) suppress political speech, and to the point where they can have a major impact on the formation of public opinion. And they can do this with immoral discretion, through private control. In this case, we need regulations to defend against privately-driven (and/or government subsidised) propaganda. 

To note, propaganda is not just a game of telling lies, and it usually isn't. It's mostly a game of ensuring that certain truths are not spoken so that false assumptions are formed. The people of North Korea, for example, really do believe in their emperor because they simply don't know what they're not allowed to know. 

Hence we need to pay special attention to current and future powerful private platforms, to ensure that freedom of speech is functional in our modern world. At the least, if we cannot stop dominant platforms from suppressing contributors who have an influence they don't like, they should be forced to advertise when and where they have blocked people, and why, while also providing a direct link on their forum so that the suppressed individual/s can have their right-of-reply. If we must have suppression in a private location, then the act of suppression itself should always be visible.

Indeed, it is when the right-of-reply is suppressed that we can know we have entered a dangerous territory.