Context Matters
How can we develop a more nuanced discussion of freedom of speech in the social media age?
"Fractals Geometric Pattern" by Dilshan R Jayakody is marked with CC BY-SA 2.0.
Twitter was only founded in 2006, the same year that Facebook opened its doors to the general public. This means that social media, as most of us know it, is only 16 years old. Even if we push back the boundaries to include MySpace, which was launched in 2003, it is still less than 20 years old. In this short space of time, social media has transformed the way that many of us consume information and relate to the people we know.
One of the strangest consequences of the social media age is that it has made us all aware of a paradox discussed by liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill in his classic essay On Liberty, which was first published in 1859. Mill was a passionate defender of freedom of opinion and freedom of speech. However, he noted that context matters. As we mentioned here, Mill says that “opinions lose their immunity” when they are expressed in a way that encourages illegal acts.
The example Mill gives might seem a little dated. He argued that nobody has the right to ban someone from believing that corn dealers starve the poor. However, if an angry mob has gathered next to the house of a particular corn dealer, then handing out placards saying that dealers starve the poor is an entirely different issue. Context matters!
Social media has blurred the boundary between having incorrect beliefs and actively spreading beliefs that are dangerous to others, which Mill discussed. The difference is due to the concept of virality, which is built into social media at a very deep level. Anyone can give their opinion on any subject, but any of these opinions can then spread like an infectious disease or a forest fire throughout the internet.
Most of us can probably agree that internet death threats should remain illegal. My right to be offensive is less important than your right to live your life without being threatened. Some forms of speech are clearly illegal, including libel and defamation. But where should we draw the line?
The contemporary debate on social media often splits between people who want the internet to be based on free speech, no matter what, and people who support bans for those who spread potentially dangerous disinformation. A more nuanced discussion based on context often gets drowned out by louder and angrier voices.
How should social media deal with conspiracy entrepreneur Alex Jones and other people who are fractally wrong? How should it deal with anti-vaxxers, who discourage vulnerable people from medical treatments that could save their lives?
Mill would probably tell us that Jones has every right to believe that Sandy Hook was a fake shooting. But, context matters. Saying that the victims were crisis actors is obviously libellous, as he is finding out the hard way. The liberal philosopher would probably also tell us that anti-vaxxers have every right to get their maths wrong. However, telling people who at high risk from COVID-19 that they shouldn’t get jabbed is much more problematic.
A little thought should show us that social media deals with these issues in a very black-and-white way. The platforms tend to have an “anything goes” attitude as they build an audience; but their managers then need to find ways of stopping fanatics from flooding the feeds of other people once the sites have reached critical mass. At the end, the platforms usually decide that you have the right to your opinion; but some opinions will get flagged by other users and some of these posts will get taken down; while repeat offenders will get banned.
If social media companies wanted to develop a more nuanced approach, it would be interesting to think about scaling the virality of posts. Right now any opinion can go viral. Contrarian views are often more emotionally appealing to the general public than mainstream ones, which gives them an unfair advantage. Would it be possible to redesign social media so that anyone can express any legal opinion, but dangerous and irrresponsible views can get downgraded by the algorithms and lose their automatic right to virality?
Of course, this begs the question: Who gets to decide which views are dangerous and irresponsible? Who gets to watch the watchdog? Is there an appeal process? If an opinion loses its right to virality and is afterwards found to be correct, is there a review to help the watchdog improve its performance next time? See you next week! The comments are open.
Further Reading
Viral Twitter thread on why moderating social media sites is hard
Article on Hunter Biden’s laptop
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Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.