Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Not even Elon Musk is wealthy enough to bring absolute free speech to Twitter – here’s why

Elon Musk on Twitter
Chesnot/Getty Images

Heinze is a professor of law at Queen Mary University of London.

Elon Musk is the planet’s number one billionaire. If anyone can turn cyberspace into a heaven – or hell – of free speech “absolutism” via a $44 billion Twitter takeover, then surely he’s the man. Right?

When free-market elephants like Musk or Jeff Bezos (who bought the Washington Post in 2013) take charge of major mass-media outlets, concerns are raised about the direction of free speech, which remains the essential ingredient of democratic participation.

This feeds into wider concerns around the ever-increasing privatization of public spaces. In the online age, the fact that we spend so much of our time in private spaces earning advertising revenues for billionaires is seen by many as an affront to human dignity. The Twitter deal may only move ownership from one set of private hands to another, but the fact that the world’s richest (and controversial) billionaire is involved seems to make it worse.

But the reality is more complex. The nostalgic idyll of free speech is that once upon a time there was a “town hall” or “public square”, where citizens would come together as equals to debate the issues of the day. Every idea could be freely aired because an enlightened citizenry would sift truth from falsehood, good from evil.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter


The people’s elected representatives would then proceed to reach conclusions faithful to the “will of the people” and would frame wise laws accordingly. Those images of a town hall or public square are assumed to be public in the full sense – they are freely open to all, and no private citizens own them.

In fact, no such arenas have ever existed, at least not in modern democracies. In years gone by, blasphemy laws in many western nations placed restrictions on people’s abilities to speak with candor about what was, at the time, far greater church influence over public policy. More importantly, women, ethnic minorities, colonized people and others often enjoyed nothing like the prerogatives to speak out without fear in the public forum, let alone as equal citizens.

Yet myths often contain a grain of truth. There can be no question that protest and dissent which used to take place in public spaces has now largely shifted to online media platforms that are owned and operated by private companies. (We do still have street demonstrations, yet even they rely upon online publicity to swell their numbers.)

Public power

Yet if we should not underestimate the power of private media interests, neither should we overestimate it. Almost the same day as Musk’s Twitter deal broke, the European Union announced it would adopt a Digital Services Act.

This will vastly increase the bloc’s powers to restrict content that promotes terrorism, child sex abuse, hate speech (which the EU has tended to define in broad terms), disinformation, commercial fraud, and other speech that poses problems for individual safety or democratic society.

I should say, as I have written elsewhere, that I disagree with several elements of the EU law, and of similar UK rules, but that is not the point here. The point is that even Musk’s billions will not shield him.

He can go ahead and fire all Twitter’s speech monitors if he wants to, but it will not be long before he needs to rehire them. For each of the categories of content that are covered in the EU law, hefty fines can be levied for breaches, so the only way to avoid the fines would be to continue doing monitoring.

In fact, why were these monitors ever hired in the first place? It was not because Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other online platforms started out with a profound social conscience.

Quite the contrary: they started out very much as the supposed free speech absolutists that Musk now fancies himself to be. As American companies, they assumed they would follow free speech law as set down under the first amendment to the US constitution.

Since the 1960s, the US supreme court has construed the first amendment to allow more provocative speech than other nations have allowed. Nonetheless, and contrary to popular belief, even US law is by no means absolutist about free speech and never has been. Loads of speech is regulated, such as restricted military data, professional confidentiality agreements and details of jury proceedings, to cite only a few among many examples.

As I explained in my 2016 book, Hate Speech and Democratic Citizenship, no society has ever permitted absolute free speech, and nor is that something that any legal system would ever have the means to sustain. Our arguments about regulation are always about degree, and never all or nothing.

Unsurprisingly, the first-amendment bubble of the big US online media platforms quickly burst. Given their global reach, they are subject to the laws of all nations in which they operate.

Once the EU started cracking down, these companies were suddenly hiring legions of online monitors. And the new EU laws – completed before Musk’s takeover was even in the works – show that countries hosting key markets can bear down even harder.

The coming showdowns will therefore not be between dictatorial censorship in the one corner and free speech absolutism in the other. They will be between business and governments. And as Elon Musk will soon be aware if he is not already, plenty of governments seem up for the fight.

The Conversation

Read More

Peopel crossing the border at night

Migrants cross into the United States from Mexico through an abandoned railroad on June 28, in Jacumba Hot Springs, Calif.

Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images

Have 25 million undocumented immigrants entered the U.S. and stayed during the Biden-Harris administration?

This fact brief was originally published by Wisconsin Watch. Read the original here. Fact briefs are published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network, and republished by The Fulcrum. Visit Gigafact to learn more.

Have 25 million undocumented immigrants entered the U.S. and stayed during the Biden-Harris administration?

No.

Authorities estimate the number of undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. during the Biden-Harris administration and remained at far less than the 25 million that Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance claimed.

Keep ReadingShow less
Stethoscope, pile of hundred dollar bills and a calculator
IronHeart/Getty Images

In swing states, D's and R's agree on how to lower health care costs

As the price of health care continues to rise faster than wages, a new public consultation survey by the Program for Public Consultation finds bipartisan majorities of Americans in six swing states, as well as nationally, support major proposals for lowering health care costs.

This survey is part of the “Swing Six Issue Surveys” series being conducted in the run-up to the November election in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on major policy issues. Unlike traditional polls, respondents in a public consultation survey go through an online “policymaking simulation” in which they are provided briefings and arguments for and against each policy. Content is reviewed by experts on different sides to ensure accuracy and balance.

Keep ReadingShow less
David Pepper and Alexander Vindman

Kettering Foundation Senior Fellows Alexander Vindman and David Pepper

Kettering Foundation

Project 2025: A threat to American values

This is part of a series offering a nonpartisan counter toProject 2025, a conservative guideline to reforming government and policymaking during the first 180 days of a second Trump administration. The Fulcrum'scross-partisan analysis of Project 2025 relies on unbiased critical thinking, reexamines outdated assumptions, and uses reason, scientific evidence, and data in analyzing and critiquingProject 2025.

Kettering Foundation Senior Fellows David Pepper and Alexander Vindman spoke with the organization’s chief external affairs officer and director of D.C. operations, Brad Rourke, about Project 2025, the controversial Heritage Foundation plan to reshape American democracy.

Keep ReadingShow less
Caleb Christen

Meet the change leaders: Caleb Christen

Nevins is co-publisher ofThe Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of theBridge Alliance Education Fund.

A lawyer by trade, Caleb Christen has served in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps since 2007, including two deployments to the Middle East. He is now a senior officer in the Navy Reserve. Attending seminary and an executive education program in organizational leadership helped Christen identify that communities are not thriving as they were intended and that people must work together to transform American democracy and civic health.

As a result, Christen co-founded the Inter-Movement Impact Project to promote organizing for collective impact. His new focus is on “Better Together America,” a collaborative network providing support to the local democracy hubs that are emerging in communities across the United States.

Keep ReadingShow less