Freedom of speech does not translate into a right of amplification using someone else’s private platform.
This is a short post by the editor, taken from a segment of the July 9th issue of the From the Hawk’s Next newsletter.
There has been a running narrative for several years now that the Left has embarked on a mission to censor conservative viewpoints anywhere and everywhere possible. From movies to books, college campuses to city parks, and from news agencies to social media, many conservatives have a growing sense that progressives and liberals in America will not tolerate their opinion and worldview.
This viewpoint is not without a basis. Many colleges have faced a flurry of lawsuits in the last decade, and have faced rulings against them, for censoring certain viewpoints from both students and professors. Professionals in the business world face the threat of being “canceled” if they communicate unacceptable views in public or on social media. News agencies purport fair-and-balanced reporting despite explicit ideological biases directing the way a story is covered. Social Media companies often enforce their policies inconsistently (Twitter censored Donald Trump’s tweet about looting for glorifying violence, but they have not censored many videos of riots and actual violence resulting from weeks of unrest).
And yet, a great deal of this “censorship” has taken place within private institutions and platforms (True censorship, like on the college campuses, has mostly fallen in the face of withering legal action). While, yes, there are many arguments that social media platforms should become public utilities or that “fairness” should be instituted through legislation, the fact nevertheless remains that, currently, the platforms and institutions that are “censoring” opinion are private and can do as they please.
Now, I put censoring and censorship in quotation marks when discussing private platforms and institutions because they are not actually censoring individuals. What they’re really doing is simply managing the content of their own platforms. The individuals are free to say and do whatever they want elsewhere. They are not having their freedom of speech denied; they are being denied a platform to amplify their speech.
Think of it this way. Let’s say you go to a rally or a protest. One of your friends brings a megaphone. This megaphone amplifies his voice over the crowd, enabling him to get his message out more effectively. He might choose to share that megaphone with you and with your other friends, but if he takes the megaphone back from someone who was saying something he disagreed with, he’s not canceling that person’s freedom of speech, he’s just taking back the tool of amplification that belongs to him.
Let’s say Alex Jones is at the protest and gets hold of the megaphone. After your friend takes the megaphone away from him because your friend, like most people with common sense, knows BS when he hears it, Mr. Jones starts telling the crowd everyone should have access to the megaphone and its unfair for your friend to arbitrarily decide who gets to have their voices amplified and who doesn’t.
Even though it was your friend who bought the megaphone, who kept it in working order, who brought the megaphone to the rally, and who willingly allowed others to use it, ol’ Alex Jones is now using the empowerment everyone felt when their own voices were amplified to convince them they’re entitled to his megaphone and that he’s “censoring” them by refusing to share it with those he disagrees with.
But I digress, and I better reel things in before I go on another long diatribe about how this is socialism. The point I’m getting at is, private institutions and platforms can’t engage in true censorship because they have no control beyond the scope of their own organizations.
Freedom of speech does not translate into a right to amplification. America’s Funniest Videos didn’t silence you because it already had enough videos of goats passing out. American Idol didn’t violate your freedom of speech because your off-key rendition of Celine Dion didn’t make the final cut. Your travails are not equivalent to a Russian Gulag because Twitter made you reset your password.
So, what would constitute actual censorship? Might it be the use of government agencies and public institutions to silence thought or speech altogether? Like say, a presidential administration trying to halt the printing of a book that contains details damaging to a re-election bid?
To use Charlie Kirk’s favorite emoji, 🤔.
This was only a sampling of the uniquely independent perspective Justin Stapley brings to the table. Be sure to subscribe to his newsletter to get his independent voice in your inbox:
