Free speech culture, Elon Musk, and Twitter | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

The White House is free to make the argument that Twitter should police misinformation and hate speech on its platform. But it has no legal basis to say that Twitter must do so. The vast majority of speech popularly thought of as misinformation or hate speech is protected by the First Amendment.

Should and must are two words that explain a lot of the confused debate surrounding free speech, the First Amendment, and Twitter.

To understand why, we have to understand the basics: The First Amendment s free speech clause is a prohibition on government censorship. The government cannot punish Twitter a private company because it refuses to censor offensive speech. The corollary is that Twitter is not bound by the First Amendment when it makes content moderation decisions, and the public, including government officials, are free to criticize those decisions. 

In fact, Musk said that s why he bought Twitter. He thought the company was overzealous in censoring speech on a platform that, in his view, is akin to the town square of the internet. Unlike most of us, he had the means to do more than complain about it he bought the whole damn company. In recent weeks Musk restored Donald Trump s Twitter account and reversed the account suspensions of Jordan Peterson and The Babylon Bee. Twitter similarly stopped enforcement of its COVID-19 misinformation policy.

But what speech Twitter should allow on its platform versus what it must allow is where most of the messiness comes in. Because that s not a debate about First Amendment law. That s a debate about free speech culture. 

via www.thefire.org