Whose Free Speech Are We Talking About?

The world's wealthiest human being, Elon Musk, has struck a deal to buy Twitter for approximately $44 billion. The self-described "free speech absolutist" has vowed to loosen content regulation, clean the Twitterverse from distortive bots and enhance democratic values. This move has elicited every conceivable reaction across the ideological spectrum. Some who feel that Big Tech has long de-platformed and silenced their viewpoints seem jubilant that a crusading billionaire will restore their voice on the microblog. They see the reconfiguration in shareholder ownership at Twitter, Inc. as a rebuke of "woke liberalism" (thank God for billionaire civil rights champions). Others feel a sense of alarm that an uber-wealthy white man seizes control of a powerful mass communication channel (name a powerful media organisation not owned by an eccentric billionaire or a wealthy corporation - North Korean State TV doesn't count). They view this as a threat to democracy and an endorsement of "hate speech" over actual "free speech" (whatever that means). 

The debate surrounding the acquisition of Twitter, Inc. by Mr Musk is riddled with profound incoherence and elision of the real issues. At the heart of the matter lie fundamental misconceptions about the meaning of free speech from both so-called "conservatives" and "liberals". Some presume the right to compel a corporation - a non-state entity - to host them and their viewpoints, notwithstanding the corporation's objections to associating with speech that it rejects. Would such people be happy with compelling newspapers to host their speech or intrude into the functions of the editorial room? Others still believe they are entitled to impose their particularised censorship model on a corporation to secure their preferred tone and civility of public discussion on a third-party platform. Would such people be happy with controlling the contents of an opinion show on television or the writers a publishing house chooses to contract? 

The beautiful irony of this is that seemingly every side of the debate on this issue seeks to hijack the free speech rights of a public corporation by enlisting the government to legislate who should speak, how they should talk and when. As to the argument that corporations are not living, breathing, flesh and blood human beings and therefore cannot possess a peculiarly human right such as free speech, pause to consider the implications of such sophistry. Virtually all news and print organisations are corporations, often subsidiary companies in diverse multinational conglomerates. While flesh and blood human beings write books, they are published, promoted and marketed by corporations. Motion pictures, television, documentaries, music and video games are almost universally funded, produced, distributed and sold by corporations. And then there are non-profit corporations, anything from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to the National Rifle Association (NRA), constituted explicitly for the advancement of particular ideological causes. The establishment of corporate personhood is not a license for governments to abuse power in ways that would be unconscionable to occasion on individual persons. 

Political concerns about who speaks and how they speak on a platform provided and funded by a corporation cannot be ameliorated by resorting to violating the said corporation's free speech rights. This is the fatal flaw with legislative efforts such as Texas's HB20 law (blocked from enforcement by a federal judge) mandating media companies not to "censor a user, a user's expression, or a user's ability to receive the expression of another person based on ... the viewpoint of the user or another person." That is the essence of governmental control of a private speaker's message, its associational preferences and its freedom to define the content of its services. Equally egregious is the well-meaning but misplaced drive to combat "hate" speech and misinformation on social media through legislative fiat. Prominent in European jurisdictions (including on the European Union level), vaguely constructed regulations impose liability on internet companies and online platforms for failing to police their content adequately or respect the rights of their users. More digital safety and privacy regulations are in the pipeline, which will, in all likelihood, induce affected parties to overregulate content on their platforms, often at the disservice of minority or unorthodox speech. 

The notion of a wealthy man acquiring a conduit of information is nothing new. What is new is the phenomenon of a handful of mega-corporations controlling the levers of the most pervasive channels of communication in human history (Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta come to mind). That is one of the greatest challenges facing us in the 21st century. That is a complicated policy issue regarding anti-trust regulations and the oligopolistic power of a few corporations. 

The idea that a few technology firms could effectively silence the President of the United States of America is a truly frightening notion. Whether outrageous or downright seditious, the propriety of the speech is not relevant. While we should resist rule by an ever-expanding, overreaching government, we should be equally wary of being swallowed by a club of colossal corporate Frankensteins. This goes way beyond Mr Musk and his pet project.