Sometimes Freedom Of Speech Is A Pie

Giving bigots free reign on social media silences their targets. Abusing people is easier than being abused, so a platform without moderation just tends to only hate.

Traditionally when we talk about freedom of speech we mean freedom from the government arresting you for your beliefs and what you say or write. In a sense free speech in this context is like the opposite of blasphemy laws - you should be able to criticise the people in power without going to jail. Most people seem to think this is a good idea. Most people also seem to agree that there are some exceptions to this concept; the most common examples are shouting fire in a crowded room or inciting a violent mob to kill someone. But in recent times “freedom of speech” has been used, often by conservatives, to mean freedom from moderation and censorship on social media. They basically want to be free to say slurs and dehumanising abuse to minorities online. Sometimes people will just point out that freedom of speech in the American Constituion sense is not the same as freedom from moderation on Facebook, but that’s not really a good counter argument as that isn’t really what they are talking about. They want to be free to speak their beliefs on major social media platforms.

There are two common arguments in response to this use of “freedom of speech” from progressives, and I think both of them are bad and miss the main issue. The two responses that you see most often are “a private company can do what it wants” and “hate speech is not free speech”, so let’s look at these.

A Private Company Can Do What It Wants

While this argument is literally true, private companies can do what they want in terms of moderation, it’s not a good argument. It turns out that, in today’s political climate at least, it just isn’t profitable for private companies to allow unmoderated hate speech, and that it is profitable for them to allow at least some forms of human rights activism. HAving no moderation at all ends up in Nazis and child porn very quickly, and banning activists makes your company look evil, and no advertiser wants their brand to be seen endorsing either of those things. But there’s no reason why this would always be true. What happens if Twitter or Youtube decides that banning all LGBT content is profitable for them? Well obviously straight away everyone would flip sides on this argument; progressives will be talking about “freedom of speech” and conservatives will say “a private company can do what it wants”. On this rare occasion, repeating an argument used against them right back at you will technically be just as good as it was when you used it in the first place. Putting faith into companies who are driven entirely by profits to do good moderation is naive.

Hate speech is not free speech

In some countries such as the USA this argument is literally false, hate speech is free speech in the constitutional sense. In some countries there are forms of hate speech that are outlawed, but even in those often many forms of hate speech aren’t specifically targeted by laws. Who decides what counts as hate speech? The government? As a trans person I am targeted by transphobic hate speech every single day, everything from casual dehumanisation to calling for a genocide against us, and the UK government doesn’t have a law against any of that (there is a law against inciting hatred against gay people which I have heard may be tested in court soon as having trans people count in the “spirit of the law”. We’ll see). As an atheist I often encounter people who will accuse me of hate speech for saying I don’t believe their god exists and that their religion is misogynistic. What I say every week is legally hate speech in some countries. Some places consider certain political speech to be hate speech too. Should social media companies just blindly abide by the rules of oppressive governments and take their hands off the reins in countries with no laws? Who does that serve? Well it doesn’t serve minorities who have no political power, that’s for sure.

When Free Speech Is A Pie

Both of these points come close to what I think the real issue is, but ultimately they miss it. In my opinion the real issue is that free speech is often used to remove others’ free speech. Several news outlets recently reported that since Elon Musk took over Twitter use of the N word on the site has gone up 500%. Do you think that black people on the site feel more or less free to speak now?

Yesterday I wrote about being catcalled, I was absolutely inundated with replies telling me that I actually enjoyed it, that it was my fault, and even to kill myself. I’m quite experienced at handling pile ons like this, and I’m naturally good at not taking it to heart, but do you think the average woman on Twitter feels free to share her experiences if this is the response we get time?

Almost every single time I post on Twitter I get a transphobic comment. I know that even if I post a fun selfie of me out in town, or if I comment on a song that I like, there will be some comment calling me a pedophile or saying that I should have my human rights removed. And I really just want to press home how utterly deranged many of these comments are. In a particularly bad recent episode I posted a selfie of me and a friend in a hot tub. I got tens of comments discussing my genitals in ways horrific even by the standards of online transphobia. Do you think trans people are as free to speak as cis people, knowing that whatever they say they will get abuse for it? 

No, of course not. If every time a woman or minority opens their mouth they get tons of abuse, then lots of them will just stop talking. They stop participating in public discussions, and often that is the goal of this hate in the first place. When we are talking about free speech as in social media moderation rather than free speech as in governments arresting people, the reality is that giving unfettered freedom to bigots means that oppressed groups are silenced. Moderation doesn’t inherently reduce freedom of speech, it gives a voice to those who are silenced by hate. Good moderation doesn’t reduce freedom of speech, it just distributes it more fairly.

So What Is The Solution?

So who decides what to ban? Isn’t everyone’s speech equally valid? Surely we should just let the strong survive, if you can’t handle the heat then get out of the kitchen? No. This is naive rubbish. All speech is not equally valid. When a gay couple posts about their engagement online and a bunch of homophobic bigots turn up to call them pedophiles and say they’re going to burn in hell, these two sets of views are not equal. What the homophobes are saying and doing is driven entirely by irrational disgust, the gay people in this scenario are just trying to share their lives with the world in the same way anyone else would. If gay people react to this constant abuse by self censoring then this isn’t survival of the fittest. These homophobes are weak, pathetic people. They would react in exactly the same way if they were targeted for abuse. It is much easier to abuse people than it is to be the target of abuse, and it is just a sad reality that in today’s society if you are a woman or part of a minority group you are just targeted for hate more often. Any moderation policy that is aiming for the “most” freedom of speech has to take this into account.

Moderating a huge social media site with thousands of posts a second isn’t easy. You can’t just set up a few loose rules and expect it to work well. Companies are going to have to hire dedicated teams for this and constantly review their decisions. But they need to drop the ridiculous premise that more moderation means less free speech. Hate speech is of no value and it silences people who have worthwhile things to say.