Someone invited me to join an alternative to Twitter, which promised it would not censor postings, thus allowing for the free exchange of ideas. I did join, but only for about 36-hours as I found most the “ideas” on the platform to be racist, sexist, and in more ways vile then redeeming. The thing though, it was my choice to stay or leave. But this experience stirred this line of thought.
What is the lesser of the two bad options? On the one hand should mega-corporations or the government limit speech to only that some anonymous entity (or algorithm) finds acceptable, or should the decision to limit speech be left to individuals with no moral basis for sound decision making?
Before we can answer we should recognize that speech (in the form of individual expression) have always been limited by something. It may be government, social pressure, or individual discretion, but there was always some filter to the speech. What it looks like to me are the former moral and social codes that helped people self-limit hateful speech are being quickly cast aside – giving way to vocal social pressure for corporations and/or the government to act as the watchdog for our communication.
In times past, men and women could stand on corners offering any opinion they wanted. If the government felt it was not good speech they would be detained and perhaps punished until they decided not to stand on the corner offering their opinion. But from societies standpoint, the audience of these political pundits, social justice warriors, or religious zealots was extremely small. Perhaps a few hundred people.
The news came to most people either in the form of town criers or the printed word. They could digest the information, form an opinion and then act on that opinion, but most of the time the social groups they belonged to would temper rash reaction. Of course, there were exceptions to this, but reactions were never instantaneous and it took time to overcome the inertia of society and the social structure.
As the means for global communication improved – the access to all the ideas of the world opened up. Unfortunately, it is almost as if Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns have formed the basis for today’s opinion based social media where we find “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” of human interaction, and we have corporations who feed on this medium “For a Fistful of Dollars” or “A Few Dollars More.”
Couple these new forms of communication with the social reality of “good speech” and “bad speech” we are now faced with choices previous generations never had to consider. For example, who determines what is good, or what is bad in speech? In the past calling for the lynching or killing of someone was considered bad. Now it seems to be okay as long as the person doing the communication is calling for the killing of someone a lot of people dislike. Should the corporations or the government step in and limit that speech? So far, they’ve not done so with a consistent application of fixed rules. Thus creating a question regarding how the rules are applied and if their employees or the corporation’s bias is the determining factor?
To add another complexity to this whole equation is the idea that “social influencers” can change speech from good to bad or back again, based on a whim or vague new social contract then who knows anymore what constitutes acceptable speech?
So back to my basic question? What is the lessor of the two evils? If our moral codes will no longer help suppress the ugliness of so many human spirits then it would seem inevitable something else must replace it. For most -- that is greater government regulation, but that comes with the obvious risk of government control of speech and its inherent use as a tool for control of the citizen, and their thoughts, as depicted in George Orwell’s novel “1984.”
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