On 4 July, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty ordered several federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Justice Department and FBI and top government officials, to stop communicating with social media companies for the specific purpose of removing misinformation and disinformation1 from their platforms. Official efforts to curb certain kinds of speech on social media began long before the COVID pandemic, but intensified during the pandemic to curb any posts from people who argued against mandatory COVID vaccinations and, in some cases, remove or block their accounts.
Right or wrong, the effort to stop misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms is a form of censorship of free speech andis a violation of the first amendment.Now the free speech protection of the first amendment is not absolute. There are a number of forms of speech that are illegal(e.g., national security secrets, seditious speech, etc.), but I want to avoid the issue of what forms of speech should be censored. Instead, I wish to focus on the issue posed by Judge Doughty’s decision, i.e., should the government be coercing social media companies to remove protected speech (that which is not specifically illegal) in postings on social media platforms.
As an aside, I find it ironic that what I would consider a liberal decision2 was made by a conservative Judge, a Republican appointed by Donald Trump and approved by a Republican majority in the Senate. I also find it ironic that such a liberal decision was condemned by most of the liberal media and the entire Democratic establishment. I would have thought that all liberals would have applauded his decision. Personally, I have to agree with Judge Doughty’s decision and I am surprised to find myself on the same side as the conservatives.
Let me explain why I agree with Judge Doughty’s decision. First, I consider social media platforms to be the electronic equivalent of the old fashioned bulletin board we used to find in grocery stores, meeting houses and other public places. The big difference is that social media platforms are available to anyone in the world for posting or reading whereas local bulletin boards can only be accessed by people in the neighborhood – so there’s a much larger audience. Now, the owner of the old fashioned bulletin board (presumably the owner of the establishment) had full authority to allow or disallow any particular kind of message posted to his bulletin board; but unless the posted information was specifically illegal, no public officials had the authority to do so. Since social media platforms are equivalent to local bulletin boards except for the size of their audience, there should be no difference in how they are treated officially.
Secondly, each of us is entitled to our opinion, and regardless how one feels about the opinions of another we are all entitled to speak our opinions as we wish. We are also entitled to say what we believe as fact whether true or not (and many things said are untrue) and no public officials have the authority to prohibit us from saying what we believe. Additionally, more than once, that which was commonly “known” to be true was discovered to be untrue (e.g., the earth is flat), so truth itself is sometimes not absolute. There are also things said that some people find offensive or insulting and there is also a lot of disinformation which is intended to deceive (which we frequently find in advertising and speeches by politicians). All of these, except when specifically made illegal, fall under the category of protected speech, and no public officials should have the right to prohibit them. That leaves it entirely up to the owners of the bulletin boards and social media platforms to decide whether to allow or disallow certain postings and not the government3. It also leaves it up to the reader to believe or disbelieve them.
Finally, I firmly believe in my right to choose what I believe. In order to make that choice, I want all the information available, even when there is conflicting information. I don’t believe anyone is always right, not even the media or our government (witness Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction). So I don’t want the government prohibiting me from seeing or hearing the views of others – I want to be free to make that choice myself.
1 Disinformation is false information deliberately intended to mislead.
2 One normally thinks of censorship as “conservative” and openness as “liberal” (at least that was how I always viewed the issue).
3 You may argue that owners of bulletin boards and social media platforms removing posts from their sites is also censorship. In a way, you would be correct. However, the First Amendment only places restrictions on the government and does not apply to private censorship. Secondly, the owner of any property has the right to decide how his property is to be used by others. Anyone, other than the owner, who posts a message on a privately owned medium of any kind constitutes use of someone else’s property for their own purpose, and the owner has a right to allow or disallow such use of his property. For example, I have the right to refuse the placement of political campaign ads on my property. Is that censorship? No. I’m not prohibiting anyone from speaking, I’m just prohibiting them from using my property for their own purpose.