The First Amendment to our Constitution provides a near absolute level of protection against governmental censorship of expression based on its content. There are no exceptions for even obviously false statements or those that most people would regard as offensive or hateful. I defend the (non-utilitarian) moral basis for this protection in Chapter 3 of my Libertarian Philosophy in the Real World, and more casually here.
Some restrictions on speech, not based on the ideas presented, are morally permissible. For example, the state should punish expression that credibly threatens violence or seeks to incite it because this is an example of a crime committed by means of expression. Similarly, there is no constitutional protection for “Your money or your life!” or for publishing information on troop movements during wartime. Finally, state officials, provided that they do so in a fair and neutral way, may legitimately regulate the “time, place, and manner” of expression, so that the rights of other innocent citizens are not violated. There are gray areas, but the principle is clear-cut.
By its terms, the First Amendment applies only to Congress, but has been extended to the various states and their instrumentalities (administrative agencies, universities, etc.) by the Fourteenth Amendment. It does not apply to private citizens, groups, associations, and corporations. Thus, large social media providers (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and platforms (Reddit, etc.) may enforce markedly different rules, and they do. For instance, Facebook’s “Community Standards” expressly bans “hate speech,” which it defines as:
a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability. We also provide some protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation.
Given the oligopoly enjoyed by a few social media platforms, this standard threatens to stifle many types or categories of constitutionally protected speech, including perfectly “respectable” opinions, comments, and even honest inquiries about biological gender-based performance at such things as chess, mathematics, physics, and so on, as well as average group differences in IQ. Those persons wishing to express opinions on these matters or engage in public discussion of these subjects (and other less savory views) beyond their immediate group of acquaintances may well be denied this opportunity.[1]
Fortunately, as we would expect under free markets alternative social media platforms and providers, such as Gab, have arisen to serve this market niche. As far as I can determine, Gab’s policy with respect to offensive or hateful comments is designed to mirror the scope of constitutionally protected expression, excluding only speech “calling for the acts of violence against others, promoting or engaging in self-harm, and/or acts of cruelty, threatening language or behaviour that clearly, directly and incontrovertibly infringes on the safety of another user or individual(s).”
Predictably, Gab has been widely castigated for promoting a forum for bigots of various stripes to spew and organize; for example:
Having a policy against violence on your social media platform doesn’t mean much if it isn’t accompanied by a policy against hate speech. If the premise of Gab is radical free speech, there’s little stopping violent hate groups from gathering there to organize, socialize, and indoctrinate new followers.
But precisely that same argument can be made against the First Amendment. In other words, Gab is “guilty” only of affording its users the same liberty enjoyed by any student at a publicly funded college or university.
Indeed, the whole point of rights is that their moral weight does not rest on utilitarian considerations. So, if you have justly earned your hefty income, you’re not morally required to surrender it all to anyone who can persuasively argue that they “need it” more than you. Similarly, rights-based theorists don’t defend free speech because of its value in promoting the vaunted “marketplace of ideas,” as even stupid and misinformed persons have the right to speak.
Because I have heterodox views that I wish to express beyond my immediate circle of friends, and because I welcome the opportunity to hear others’ disfavored opinions, I am glad that Gab exists. I would hope that any person inclined to think for themselves would be similarly pleased. Opposition to Gab and similar platforms is just another ominous sign of how many ostensibly well-educated people do not appreciate the moral considerations that undergird free expression, and how vulnerable this right is in our current political environment.
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[1] I had my own recent run-in with Facebook when this comment of mine was removed for violating its “community standards”:
Okay, last word, cuz you have proven yourself incapable of logical reasoning, and are thus wasting my time. The issue raised by Jake’s comment was the adverse consequences of immigration, thus–if you thought about it–rendering almost everything you say irrelevant.
A substantial community of Jews have lived in France for about a millennium. In the last 100 years or so, they have been fully integrated and largely assimilated. In the post-War period, they have NEVER had their kids chased out of the public schools, fled neighborhoods, etc.–until recently. This is a NEW phenomenon, brought on by large-scale post War Muslim immigration. To my knowledge, NO Jews have been killed over the last decade in hate crimes by non-Muslims. And the fleeing Jews are NOT attributing it to Le Pen supporters. Thus, the rate of French-on-French crime is irrelevant, absent your introducing evidence that Muslims immigration has generally had a beneficial impact on crime and school-bullying, etc. generally, and therefore we should accept the harm to the Jews for the “greater good.” Given that Muslims criminality, dependence on welfare and rate of unemployment is substantially HIGHER than for natives, that is pure fantasy.
Finally, to my knowledge FEWER than 11 Jews have been murdered in hate crimes over the last decade in the US, and surprise, surprise, our population is something like 4x larger, so the lethal threat to Jews is FAR higher in France than here. But even that’s not the real point. The point, as previously explained, is that hate crimes are DIFFERENT.
Whatever the merits of the thoughts expressed here, I hope it is clear that this comment does not remotely resemble “hate speech.” After I objected, and long after this thread was over, FB reinstated my comment.
