I had a conversation with a person a few days ago who is anti-free speech. In fact, we couldn't seem to find much common ground in our conversation and there is a lot from that conversation that I may eventually post on, but for now, I want to focus on the free speech issue.
The conversation began with her bemoaning the fact that Facebook is somehow responsible for all the misinformation that was spread over the past couple of years regarding COVID and other things. I know there is a story out there about the whistleblower saying Facebook is talking out of both sides of its mouth regarding the suppression of misinformation.
The problem is that there is very rarely a real person blocking posts, suspending users, putting warnings up in front of pictures, etc. Most of the time, there are algorithms that determine if a picture, meme, video, or other kinds of posts contain content that breaks Facebook's community rules, requires a warning, or requires a user to be suspended or warned.
Two personal examples illustrate the lack of people monitoring the information being posted on Facebook.
1. On May 26th of last year, my son and a friend of his rescued a dog. While we were trying to figure out what to do with the dog, we kept him at our house. On May 27th, I took a video of the dog and shared it on Instagram. That video is still up on Instagram despite being owned by Facebook. However, I selected the feature to share the video on Facebook and Facebook rejected the video saying it contained sexually explicit content and a warning was put on my account. I disagreed with the warning, but nobody at Facebook ever got back to me and there was no recourse because I'm a nobody. Because Instagram uses different algorithms for some reason, the video is still up there.
2. Ever since I started Facebook, I have always made it a challenge to debunk fake news. Within the last few years, an old meme started to make the rounds making a very old and easily disproven claim that Irish were sent to the United States as chattel slaves. I shared the meme with a rebuttal to the claim. More than a week went by and Facebook's fact-checkers finally caught up with me and decided to fact-check the meme as well. So, anyone who saw my picture after that saw a message that the picture contained misinformation. Evidently, that drew Facebook's attention to my page again.
In September, I shared a meme questioning the safety and efficacy of the COVID vaccine. Along with the meme, I posted a response. A few days later, I received a warning from Facebook. I forget the exact language and wish I had taken a screenshot. Essentially, the warning said that because I had shared misinformation memes in the past, they were going to limit the visibility of my posts. Now, I frankly don't care, but I did notice an immediate dropoff in interaction with my page. I don't make a living with Facebook, so it wasn't that important to me. Recently, however, a friend of mine saw a post and said it had been a while since he had seen anything from me. So, Facebook obviously throttled back the visibility of my page.
In their rush to suppress misinformation, Facebook created an algorithm that suppresses speech that is also trying to counter misinformation. And as I noted above, when you are accused by Facebook or Twitter of spreading misinformation based on a picture rather than the content of any comments on your post, or if you're accused by them of doing anything that violates their community standards, there is often very little recourse for the average user, and by "very little" I mean, "none."
I told these stories to the woman who was anti-free speech, and she said something to the effect of, "Well something has to be done to combat misinformation." I agreed with her, but I quoted Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who said, "... the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." And of course, she responded with a good old-fashioned "yeah but..." "Yeah, but because of the internet, misinformation spreads so much faster."
I told her those same kinds of arguments were made in regards to the telegraph, telephone, radio, and television. Even in the early days of the internet when it was mostly bulletin boards and chat rooms, and e-mail was in its infancy, politicians worried about how the information superhighway would be abused to spread misinformation. Level heads prevailed, at least to some extent, because Brandeis was right: the remedy is more speech, not less.
My debate opponent persisted that the internet is a different animal. I conceded that, but I also said that it is a much harder animal to control. I made the argument that when Facebook and Twitter started cracking down on free speech because of what they considered to be hate speech and misinformation, people didn't just stop spreading misinformation because they were locked out of Facebook, they went to MeWe and Parler.
Instead of creating an open forum for the free exchange of ideas, Facebook tried to turn itself into an echo chamber of mostly progressive and leftist ideas. Those on the right went to MeWe and Parler and those social media platforms became an echo chamber of mostly conservative and rightwing ideas. Now, Donald Trump is going to create his own social media platform that I guarantee will be completely avoided by moderates and the left, except for media types and politicians, but his social media platform will become an echo chamber of far-right ideas.
Today, John Stossel posted a video that brings something to light that is even more concerning. Facebook isn't just suppressing right-wing ideas. It is suppressing any information that conflicts with the societal narrative it is trying to create. Thus, even left-wing writers, scientists, politicians, and entertainers are getting "fact-checked," censored, and blocked, because the information they are sharing, even if true, conflicts with Facebook's narrative.
This brings me back to my conversation/debate a few days ago. "When you suppress free speech..." I began, but she interrupted me to inform me that she doesn't like the word suppress. She said what Facebook and Twitter are doing is a corrective to misinformation, which as of today we know is not true. I told her she can call it whatever she wants to, but the reality is that a "corrective" doesn't make misinformation or speech you don't like disappear. Because some of the information that Facebook is censoring is coming from legitimate sources, think tanks, educational institutions, research organizations, and so forth, that information will not be suppressed at all. It simply won't be available to the masses on social media. When you suppress misinformation, it also doesn't go away. It goes into an echo chamber where the misinformation will grow, fester, and likely turn into something worse.
This is an argument I've been making for years, so it was very easy for me to make this argument when I had this conversation. I think that she realized that she wasn't going to change my mind, so she changed the subject, which she did on a number of occasions. She even tried to end the conversation by saying she needed to go eat lunch because she had low blood sugar, but then wanted to get the last word in, which meant our conversation continued and meandered through a number of topics.
What I did not get to tell her, because of the conversational course changes, is that what Louis Brandeis called "enforced silence" and what I call "suppression of free speech" is not the action of a person who loves liberty. Advocating for the suppression of speech you don't like is intellectually lazy when it is espoused by individuals and it is tyranny when it is espoused or actually done by politicians in power.
Noam Chomsky, with whom I disagree on a variety of subjects politically, economically, religiously, and many more philosophical subjects, has a great quote about free speech. He said, "Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech."
Another point I have been making for years is that when the precedent is set that the government can suppress speech, the party in power gets to decide what is acceptable speech and what is not. Democrats, do you really want Republicans to decide what is and is not acceptable speech? Republicans, do you really want Democrats to decide what is and is not acceptable speech? I'm independent, so I don't want any political party, politician, pundit, or individual telling me what is acceptable speech.
If someone is saying something you don't like, you need to figure out a good way to counter those words, and shouting them down, or worse, reacting with violence is not the remedy or productive in any way. In fact, those are the kinds of tactics that fascists and tyrants actually use. If you say you're anti-fascist but you shout down and attack people that you disagree with, you are actually a fascist.
Study the things you're passionate about. Learn the arguments for and against. Have rational conversations, even if you think your opponent is irrational. You may find that you change your mind about some things. Of course, most people are subject to confirmation bias, so study may not change your mind. Whether or not study changes your mind, you'll win more people to your side with polite conversation than you will by lazily shouting them down. Sure, study takes work and it's going to be harder, but if you want to win debates, and you won't win them all, you're going to need to work at it. That's why I said advocating for or simply being in favor of suppressing free speech is intellectually lazy.
There are also those who say that speech should be suppressed because words themselves can be violence. If words are violence, well, to quote Bill Maher, who strangely seems to be one of the few people who is still making sense these days, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words? Well, if you don't know how the second part goes, you need to go back to kindergarten."
