Stop Conflating Free Speech and the First Amendment

There's a debate taking place right now, on social media platforms and in the halls of Congress alike, regarding censorship on the internet. How far does our natural right to free speech go? Does a private company's right to regulate how its publicly-used spaces are used supercede an individual's natural rights? Are social media sites publishers, platforms, both, or neither? These are all very complex questions.

Most, if not all, of us have seen the kinds of events which have brought us to this debate. A reply or comment which many people find objectionable is pounced upon by other followers of the user or website. This individual is told they should not share such opinions or thoughts, or their posting is removed, or they are banned. Another onlooker can't help but respond, "Whatever happened to free speech?" And this renders a response of constitutional literalism from those opposed to the opinion, asserting that "the first amendment only applies to action taken by the government," and with that, those who suppressed the opinions of another consider the matter closed.

This idea has been repeated so often, it has become a meme unto itself. It is the immediate response to any defense which even references free speech. And yes, while the statement, "The First Amendment only applies to actions taken by the government against freedom of expression," holds true, it seems to miss the point entirely. The situation was in no way helped by a certain XKCD comic, or a list from Cracked, which are undoubtedly being used even as I write this to argue for the suppression of expression and ideas online. But to respond to a statement about free speech, with a response addressing the limitations of the first amendment, shows a distinct lack of respect for a concept which had existed long before the Bill of Rights had even been penned.

Common Law and Thomas Paine

This argument presumes that "free speech" and "the First Amendment" are interchangeable. However, most people do not assert that private companies are infringing on their First Amendment rights, merely that they are having their freedom of speech infringed. The Bill of Rights are not, as the Ninth and Tenth Amendments will clearly show us, not the enumeration of rights themselves, but rather laws which serve to protect those 'certain unalienable rights' we have as humans — often called human rights, or natural rights.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

9th Amendment oF the United States Constitution

The freedom of speech is a natural right much older than the US Constitution, and much broader than the First Amendment gives credit. Like all other natural rights, free speech is innate for all people, including non-Americans, and it exists independently of any government regardless of the legislation those governments wish to impose. The right to free speech is not only about what the government can or cannot do. Freedom of speech means its wrong for any entity, governmental or otherwise, to try and silence people and their ideas.

Unfortunately, it seems the people who disagree with unpopular opinions and use that disagreement as grounds to silence those who hold those opinions fail to grasp this. Even in the last week, I have seen multiple people assert that censorship can only be done by governments, which is completely untrue. While an act of censorship may not be legally inhibiting a person's constitutional right to free speech, they are still being inhibited; and in many cases, it is just as wrong as if it were a government doing it.

Of National Concern

This subject was given a worldwide spotlight, in the last week, after President Trump took to Twitter to address the issue of shadowbanning and suspending the accounts of conservatives. In response to Twitter's repeated application of newly-created rules, ex post facto, to justify the removal of accounts belonging to Alex Jones, Gavin McInnes, the Proud Boys, and many, many others, Trump said the following:

Whether you agree with the President or not, he makes very important points. It has been repeatedly proven that outlets like CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post will omit pertinent facts or outright lie, to maintain their narrative, and yet they are given free reign and support across all dominant social media platforms, while independent journalists who stand to disagree are banned, shadowbanned, or otherwise silenced. Recently, the decisions made by social networks against conservative voices have begun affecting liberals as well.

And while Twitter and Facebook assert that there is no bias exercised in their suppression of speech, people within their companies and Silicon Valley have come out to say otherwise. James Damore gained quite a lot of fame when he made public the rather biased decisions Google was making, for example. A pseudonymous Reddit user even came out to explain exactly how conservatives are unfairly targeted by the biases of those who develop and train algorithms meant to identify "harmful" speech:

Removing and suppressing ideas with which you disagree does nothing to show others why those ideas might be bad; it prevents discourse on the subject entirely, and takes away from the freedom of others to understand how such ideas could come about. No one should be silenced; it destroys our ability to grow, as a society, and to learn, as a people.

The Freedom to Hear and Disagree

Free speech is not just about a person's right to speak; it's also about everyone else's right to hear an idea, process that idea, and choose whether to agree or disagree. Even on a subject with which everyone but one person on the planet agrees, every one of us needs freedom of speech to hear what that one lone disagreeing person has to say; there's no telling what could be gleaned from their unique perspective. In the words of Salman Rushdie:

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

Salman Rushdie

When speech is suppressed, and ideas are censored, they are buried from those who could stand to disagree and advance everyone's understanding. But the speech and ideas are not stopped by censorship; they are like seeds, and when you bury a seed, it grows. Forbid certain topics, and they fester in dark corners of the internet. Enforce political correctness, and the politically-incorrect will band together to expose the hypocrisy of the politically-correct. Attempts to control how people think, speak, and interact never end well. The President is right; instead of silencing those you would consider bad, we need to let everyone participate, good or bad. We're all intelligent humans; we'll figure it out.

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