Half of Americans want the internet to be a free speech zone. But what does that mean?
With Elon Musk preparing to take control of Twitter, users and observers are wondering what it will mean for content moderation on the platform. But there’s a broader question surrounding free speech on the internet, and Americans are, as usual, divided along party lines.
Half of Americans believe the internet “should be a free speech zone, where speech should be uncensored,” according to a new poll by YouGov, with Republicans far more in favor of the concept than Democrats.
Nearly three-quarters of Republicans (72 percent) agreed that the internet should be uncensored, compared to 34 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of independents. But that’s a vague statement that leaves a lot to interpretation.
“I’m not even sure there’s consensus of what a free speech zone actually means,” said India McKinney, director of federal affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for digital privacy and free speech.
And as McKinney noted, the First Amendment protects people from government interference in speech. Private businesses are not covered and social media platforms must provide some content moderation unless they are willing to overwhelm users with spam.
“It’s actually impossible to completely stop content moderation," she said. “Truly eliminating content moderation means inundating people with spam. It keeps systems functional.”
A number of conservative-focused social media platforms have been launched in recent years in an attempt to attract users away from Facebook and Twitter, which banned Donald Trump and other Republicans for spreading disinformation.
Those platforms, like Parler, Getter and Trump’s own Truth Social, say they do not censor users. So far they have had mixed results in building an audience. Truth Social had a rocky launch and recently dropped down the list of most downloaded apps before surging back to the top this week.
Conservatives have long been critical of Facebook and Twitter, alleging the platforms uses algorithms that help the political left. However, conservative users like Ben Shapiro, Sean Hannity and Dan Bongino regularly have some of the most popular posts on Facebook.
Musk has said he wants Twitter to be a center for free speech that is fair to all parties.
For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally— Elon Musk (@Elon Musk) 1651091900
He attempted to explain his intent on Tuesday, but his explanation – “By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law” – left many users concerned about the platform being a home for disinformation and hate speech.
And others found opportunities to tweak Musk himself.
FYI: We\u2019re blocked by Elon Musk.\n\nSo much for being \u201ccommitted\u201d to free speech.pic.twitter.com/iXsMQYq8v0— Public Citizen (@Public Citizen) 1651008178
"When people like Elon Musk say they are 'free speech absolutists' we should treat that with a great deal of skepticism, especially coming from a billionaire who has often tried to squelch the speech of those under his employ and who operates within a broader political economy where essentially money equals speech," said Victor Pickard, co-director of the Media, Inequality & Change Center at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. "We are not talking about a democratically governed public square when we're talking about discursive spaces on the internet."
EFF touts the "Santa Clara Principles," which cover transparency and accountability, as a better way to manage content on social media.
Amid ongoing claims of “cancel culture,” YouGov also asked people whether the internet makes it easier to share one’s opinion without facing consequences. Here, the numbers were reversed.
Again, 49 percent of respondents agreed that the internet does make that easier. However, while 62 percent of Democrats said yes, only 46 percent of Republicans agreed (along with 45 percent of independents).
The survey of 1,000 adults was conducted March 22-25 and has a margin of error of 3.5 percent.
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.