The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
Freedom of expression is the institution that guarantees the freedom of the individual to express themselves and to speak without fear of government retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction.
We have been discussing how Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton called on foreign companies to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter. The EU has responded aggressively to warn Musk not to allow greater free speech or face crippling fines and even potential criminal enforcement. After years of using censorship-by-surrogates in social media companies, Democratic leaders seem to have rediscovered good old-fashioned state censorship.
Breton has made no secret that he views free speech as a danger coming from the United States that needs to be walled off from the Internet.
Under the guise of counterterrorism, the government is accelerating pressure on social media companies to crack down on speech the feds deem disinformation.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the latest liberal leader to call for an international alliance to censor speech. Unsatisfied with the unprecedented corporate censorship of social media companies, leaders like Hillary Clinton have turned from private censorship to good old-fashioned state censorship. Speech regulation has become an article of faith on the left. Ardern used her speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly to call for censorship on a global scale.
If the First Amendment means anything, it surely means that an individual can mock the government without fear of being arrested. But that’s exactly what happened to Anthony Novak when he created a parody Facebook page poking fun at his local police department in Parma, Ohio.
Bret Speaks with Ramsey Ramerman about section 230 in the context of the social media and governmental landscapes in 2022. They address the problem solved by section 230, how it has been interpreted by courts, and the power it has allowed to be abused; furthermore, they discuss what routes are accessible to address this issue, and what paths are being and have been explored already.
Alex Berenson was kicked off the site at the White House’s urging. That’s a violation of the First Amendment.
The Tornado Cash crackdown Is an attack on speech, privacy, and the entire concept of cryptocurrency.
