By David Harsanyi
Thursday, August 09, 2018
Of course sites like Facebook, Apple, and YouTube are
free to ban conspiracy mongers like Alex Jones from their platforms. They have
a right to dictate the contours of permissible speech on their sites, and to
enforce those standards either dutifully or hypocritically or ideologically or
using any method they see fit. No one seriously disputes this.
Then again, Twitter also has a right, as a private
entity, to take a stand, and, as the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey explains it,
dispassionately allow free exchanges of ideas—even the ugly ones Infowars
offers—as long as users don’t break the company’s rules. Yet, here we are,
watching a number of journalists—supposed sentinels of free
expression—demanding that billionaire CEOs start policing speech that makes
them uncomfortable.
Jones, who has made numerous hateful, and reckless
remarks, should make any reasonable person uncomfortable. In this regard,
though, he’s certainly not alone. And if Facebook is now guaranteeing a
platform free of unpleasant voices who break their vague terms of service, they
have lots of work ahead.
To some extent, I can understand how frustrating it is
watching a bigoted conspiracy theorist who has destroyed lives be provided a
voice on a large media platform. After all, I’ve been trying to ignore Al
Sharpton’s cable show for years. Yet if I were running a social media platform,
I’d like to think I would allow nearly anyone— minus those who threaten
violence or otherwise break the law—speak. It’s not as if users wouldn’t
possess a block button. I can’t recall a single time in my decade using social media
ever opening an Infowars link. I doubt most of you have either. Even if you did, you wouldn’t melt. They’re
just words.
And while the ejection of Jones isn’t the end of the
world, and it doesn’t necessarily portend a mass expulsion of less extreme voices,
let’s stop acting like conservatives are foolish for harboring some concerns
about the incrementalist goals of would-be liberal censors.
Every day, contemporary liberals run around accusing
Trump supporters of being in league with white supremacists and social
conservatives of being unrepentant bigots. Republicans are regularly charged
with propagating fascist views or attempting to literally murder Americans.
It’s implausible to imagine a future where liberal
activists don’t demand Republican
groups be deplatformed. We already see liberal groups targeting advertisers of
popular conservative radio hosts and trying to have National Rifle Association,
an organization regularly compared to terrorists, thrown off platforms on moral
grounds. The slippery slope already exists.
Take a recent Vox video ostensibly exploring the “tough
debate about censorship and free speech” on the Internet. “It’s not just Alex
Jones,” says Vox. Among some of the offensive (in reality, some of it is merely
provocative) comments on immigration and Islam offered by, as Vox labels them,
“YouTube’s most extreme creators,” we see Turning Point USA’s Candace Owens
saying, “No one likes feminism, that’s what happened, Hillary!”
You might find her remark tendentious or simplistic, but
under no reasonable interpretation can it be described as “extreme.” Yet
conflating partisan Republican positions with hate speech or intolerable ideas
has been a longstanding strategy on the Left in its efforts to stigmatize
views. It’s liberals who often make little distinction between Infowars and
mainstream conservatives. And it’s conservatives who need to worry.
People struggle—or, more likely, pretend to struggle—to
make a distinction between defending the value of free expression and defending
those who use it. Arguing that it’s preferable to err on the side of more
speech on a giant user-generated website doesn’t make you an ally of Jones any
more than defending the right of The New
York Times editorial board to hire Sarah Jeong makes you a small-minded
racist. What it might mean, though, is that you’re more troubled by the
prospects of authoritarian ideologues who believe speech is tantamount to
“terrorism” attempting to dictate what our discourse looks like than you are
about some media-generated panic about Jones.
Now, it’s true that if you don’t like the standards that
social media sites have instituted, or you don’t like the users who populate
the place, you’re free to leave and find another outlet to amplify your
thoughts. There’s no God-given right to be on Facebook or Twitter. But once social media sites take on the
responsibility of policing speech, they are transforming themselves into
adjudicators of what ideas are tolerable on a purportedly open platform.
That’s a precarious position moving forward. Infowars was
an easy target. Others will surely be more complicated.
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