Freedom of Speech and the Recent Actions of Twitter and Facebook

There is a lot of confusion about the concepts freedom of speech and censorship and in the wake of Twitter and Facebook blocking the accounts of those who linked to a New York Post story indicating shady dealings between Hunter Biden and Ukrainian officials that seem to implicate the Democratic Party presidential nominee, Joe Biden. See for example: Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad and WH press secretary locked out of Twitter for sharing Post’s Hunter Biden story.

But as outrageous as these moves by Twitter and Facebook are, they are not a violation of free speech.

Only a government can block free speech. That is, a government can prevent speech where ever it occurs, on a sidewalk, on private property, in a privately published book or on a privately owned web site. These are examples of limiting free speech.

What a  private individual or a private organization does with regard to property it owns is not a limitation of free speech in the sense that all an individual, or group of individuals, can do is control speech on the properties they own and, importantly, not beyond what they own.

You would be hard-pressed to find any individual or group of individuals that do not do some censoring of material that appears on their properties.

For example, you are going to find very few media properties allowing pics or videos of a green tailed monkey screwing a nine-year-old boy. The type of censorship I am discussing here, I hasten to add, is private property censorship as opposed to the blunt instrument of government censorship.

Every owner of a media outlet will have terms as to what the goals of his media property are.

For example, here at Target Liberty, I regularly block comments from Paul Hansen. 

Here are some of his recent gems:

• The real question is, how will jews use the Holocaust in this situation to turn a profit? (For the post: BOMBSHELL: New York Gov. Cuomo Tells Orthodox Jewish Leaders That Lockdown Policy is Fear Driven Policy)
• They should be wearing stars. (For the post: Orthodox Jews in New York City Gather and Burn Face Masks)
• She should have never been considered for the bench just on the basis of her two Haitian pets. (For the post: What Libertarians Need to Know About Amy Coney Barrett Statements and Judicial Rulings)
• "This is what LBJ's second-generation Great Society looks like, mix (For the post: Chicago Postal Workers Threaten to Stop Delivering Mail After Multiple Employees Shot)

Of course, since I have criticized recent Twitter and Facebook censorship, Hansen has let me have it:

• What I find amusing is that RW criticizes another website for engaging in the exact kind of censorship that he does.
• RW doesn't support free speech on his own site, otherwise he wouldn't moderate the comments. Why should he be concerned if other sites do the same thing?

But the thing is that I am not running a communications platform for all kinds of discussion. At Target Liberty, I am discussing the finer points of libertarian theory. It is very difficult to garb new readers' attention for the long haul. They will cruise a couple of posts and comments and make a quick decision. If they spot a bunch of anti-black and anti-Jew comments, they may get the wrong impression about the site---so I block Hansen a lot but will very occasionally bring his comments to the top in a post where I can put them into the context of what my site is about.

On the other hand, Facebook and Twitter appear to be more message platforms, where all types of views are expressed. Some censorship will always have to occur ( the green tailed monkey screwing a nine-year-old boy problem) but the prevalent impression put out by these platform operators is that if it is true it can stay. Thus, it is legitimate to criticize Twitter and Facebook for going deep into the censorship role when it appears to be only blocking material that is objectionable in Leninist Valley.

And the censorship of the Biden story falls well into this category, especially when you balance it against the shaky stories Twitter and Facebook allowed on the platforms with regard to Russiagate and Ukrainegate.

Now because they are private entities, they can certainly do anything they want with their platforms. They could even, until Trump leaves office (whenever that is), go the old full Soviet-style mode when a leader died, and play classical music, mostly string music in minor keys. But this doesn't mean we can't object since they position themselves as open platforms and not operators with a Soviet-style thumb on the scale.

Likewise, it would be appropriate to criticize Target Liberty if Walter Block won the Noble Peace Prize and it was not mentioned in a post and attempts at bringing it up in the comments were censored.

That would be a legitimate complaint but not a complaint about blocking a comment which references Jews and blacks in a derogatory fashion.

As for Twitter and Facebook, they may have really overplayed their hand with the Biden story blocking. It is just too obvious as to how unbalanced a game they are playing.

-RW