Free speech is not a noble goal to pursue

Freedom and free speech have always been topics of deep interest to me. Historically, I’ve been a firm advocate for free speech, aligning myself with Pirate Party principles.

Later on, during my political explorations, I briefly ventured into libertarianism and “free speech absolutism” which led me to consider many other possible arguments, such as the right to free information from a journalistic perspective. For example: “Why should the government get to decide what kind of news I am allowed to read?” Surely, governments would have a strong incentive to not allow dissenting information that could threaten their grip on power.

However, recent developments have prompted me to reevaluate my views on free speech and freedom at large. On a few occasions, I found myself falling into the slippery slope of “all speech should be allowed and protected”. But should it?

Definitions

What is “speech”?

Traditionally, “speech” is associated with words, but this view is too narrow. Is journalism speech? Is art speech? Is pornography speech? Are organised public protests speech?

Broadening “freedom of speech” to include non-verbal manifestations like paintings or organised protests yields a more accurate depiction of the multitude of ways people can express themselves. However, it is still extraordinarily difficult to agree on a single definition of “speech” that satisfies everyone. The Supreme Court of the United States has some examples available [archived version] that may help shed light onto this poorly-defined topic:

According to US courts, free speech includes the right to:

use certain offensive words and phrases to convey political messages.
engage in symbolic speech, (e.g., burning the flag in protest).

But it does not include the right:

to make or distribute obscene materials.
of students to make an obscene speech at a school-sponsored event.

From these examples, it is not immediately clear what “offensive” or “obscene” mean, which would require further discussion, and stray away from the primary purpose of this post.

What is freedom?

Is freedom being able to do whatever you want, at any time? Is your freedom being infringed upon when there are consequences to your acts?

For example, you can argue that you’re not really free if the police jails or fines you for your acts. When driving a car, your freedom is limited by road speed limits: you cannot drive as fast as you want. In certain countries, insulting the King or President can also have serious legal repercussions.

But what about non-government entities? Are you free to express your sexual orientation at school if your other classmates will bully you for doing so? Are you free to download copyrighted content from file-sharing websites if the RIAA will sue you for it? Can you truly be free if you’re one layoff away from financial ruin?

I can only conclude that every person has a different opinion on free speech. What qualifies as such, and what doesn’t qualify. What should be allowed, and what should not be allowed. This automatically means that people using “free speech” as an argument would then have to define this concept accurately and in a way that leaves no room for misunderstanding. Otherwise, these discussions will never be productive beyond a political goal of shutting down your opponent by accusing them of violating freedom of speech.

The warriors of free speech

At the moment, there are many proponents of free speech. Among them, you can find figures such as Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, Elon Musk, Twitter’s current CEO, and Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States.

The issue with these figures is that they often do not believe in the type of freedom of speech they publicly defend. This is especially the case for their political opponents, which they seek to cancel and discredit.

Pavel Durov and Telegram

Pavel Durov, a notorious free speech advocate, CEO of Telegram, and founder of Vkontakte—Russia’s largest social network—has loudly stood in favour of free speech, sometimes at the cost of terrorist content [archived version].

Many organisations have shed light on how terrorists abuse and take advantage of Telegram’s “free speech” stance to spread terrorist propaganda:

Please note, while Telegram has end-to-end encryption capabilities, the default private chats are not encrypted [archived version]. And most of this terrorist content the articles discuss is spread via public channels and public group chats.

This appears to be one of the unfortunate realities of applying the free speech concept and its lax moderation practices universally across a platform like Telegram with such a diverse user base.

Telegram also promised to be “free forever. No ads. No subscription fees.”. Today, however, Telegram has both subscription fees and ads in channels.

Elon Musk

In March 2022, before Elon Musk made an offer to buy Twitter, he posted a poll asking [archived version]:

Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.
Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?

Another example where he is explicit on his free speech intentions [archived version]:

Starlink has been told by some governments (not Ukraine) to block Russian news sources. We will not do so unless at gunpoint.
Sorry to be a free speech absolutist.

In principle, some people would agree with Musk in that free speech is necessary. Even I used to. But in order for freedom of speech to be useful, it must be possible for anyone to use it, regardless of political orientation, ethnic identity, or social background. This quickly breaks down with Elon Musk.

In April 2022, Elon Musk tweeted [archived version]:

By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.
I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.

This is a particularly contentious issue that reflects multiple times across this very post, so I will not dwell into it for now, but it is important to remember that on October 2023, the EU Commission sent a request for information [archived version] to Twitter over illegal content including hate speech and terrorist content.

But Elon Musk doesn’t seem particularly rational or trustworthy as he has a spotty record of firing people who are critical of him from SpaceX [archived version] and Twitter [archived version]

Or cancelling the Twitter accounts of several journalists [archived version], and the Elonjet account they were reporting on, despite him publicly stating otherwise [archived version], and suing the Anti-Defamation League [archived version].

Margaret Sullivan writes on The Guardian [archived version]:

In targeting the ADL, he’s proven himself not a free-speech absolutist but an absolute bully.

Donald Trump and the United States

Then we have another controversial figure: Donald Trump.

Trump has made statements criticising what he believes to be censorship, on The Guardian [archived link]:

[…] Trump tweeted harsh criticism of mainstream news organizations such as the Washington Post and New York Times, while lashing out against social media platforms for banning the editors of a prominent American conspiracy theory website, Infowars.

He is also responsible for creating Truth Social after he was banned from Twitter, which states [archived version]:

TRUTH Social seeks to create a free speech haven in the social media sphere and encourages your unencumbered free expression.

We cherish free expression. TRUTH Social must prevent illegal and other prohibited content from contaminating our platform.

It is tragic that a prominent political figure such as the President of the most powerful economy in the world would make such outrageous statements such as “injecting disinfectant” [archived version], calling the Capitol rioters “very special” and saying he “loves them” [archived version], publicly calling the United States Presidential Election fraudulent without any proof, and against all experts and witnesses, or claiming that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” in a way that echoes Hitler’s speeches against Jewish people [archived version].

Trump is also known to block users on Twitter, which according to Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump is a violation of the First Amendment given that Trump was a government official at the time, and the lawsuit argues:

[…] they and other followers of the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account “are now deprived of their right to read the speech of the dissenters who have been blocked”.

Prominent free speech figures, like Durov, Musk, and Trump, are either liars and/or actively harmful to society.

Truth is asymmetrical

The cost of producing disinformation is practically free, while the cost of combatting and debunking such dis- or misinformation can be high. This is called Brandolini’s Law, which was first introduced in 2013 by Alberto Brandolini.

It is further aided by the Gish gallop technique, which is the name of a rhetorical device consisting in overwhelming the opponent by providing arguments regardless of their quality or accuracy.

There are other situations that evidence the dangers of completely unregulated free speech, like filibuster, false balance, “just asking questions”, or sealioning, to name a few.

There is evidence that even attempting to do some research online about a certain topic can send people deeper into the rabbit hole of disinformation [archived version], and somehow, make false stories more believable.

A notable example:

The term ‘engineered famine’ in the article is a unique term that is unlikely to be used by reliable sources. An analysis of respondents’ search results found that adding the word ‘engineered’ in front of ‘famine’ changes the search results returned. 0% of search terms that contained the word ‘famine’ without ‘engineered’ in front of it returned unreliable results, whereas 63% of search queries that added ‘engineered’ in front of the word ‘famine’ were exposed to at least one unreliable result. In fact, 83% of all search terms that returned an unreliable result contained the term ‘engineered famine.’

When defending freedom of speech, it is important to consider all the above situations, and whether the supposed advantages of free speech can be outweighed by the damage these concepts can cause in an otherwise healthy debate.

Is this a net positive?

While the biggest proponents of free speech tend to be libertarian or libertarian-adjacent, and often come from an anti-fascist and anti-communist stance, the reality is that freedom of speech is often used and abused by the extreme right to disseminate absurd, hateful conspiracies. I too, once upon a time, believed that words only have the power you give them.

In truth, the attempted Capitol coup d’état opened my eyes to the absurdity of totally unfiltered speech with no accountability. I think it’s fairly uncontroversial to say that every person simply wants a better world, a better country, a better society, and a better neighbourhood. Regardless of left- or right-wing policies, everyone wants things to improve. The real question is: improve what specifically? And what steps should be taken to realise those particular improvements?

A generous interpretation for a concept such as “freedom of speech” is that it allows anyone to choose and learn freely, much like the free market allows consumers to choose the best way to spend their money, and “vote with their wallet”—although this interpretation has massive flaws.

For example, the most powerful media corporations have a much easier time pushing their ideas onto the general public, because they have a practically unlimited marketing and lobbying budget. For obvious reasons, this situation doesn’t happen with individuals.

Curiously, a similar flaw exists in the idea of free markets: powerful corporations are able to wage price wars to destroy the competition by making things at such a price point that smaller manufacturers with less economies of scale cannot compete with, go bankrupt, at which moment the corporations can jack up prices due to the lack of competition.

Human nature… There, I said it

The illusory truth effect describes how people are inclined to believe false information after repeated exposure. A lie repeated a thousand times is still a lie, but prominent political figures take advantage of this unfortunate cognitive bias to sway public opinion and reinforce their narratives.

Precisely, this illusory truth effect Wikipedia article links to another article regarding Trump’s repeated use of false or misleading statements for his own political gain, both while in office, as well as after he was defeated in the Presidential Election of 2020.

We can see Brandolini’s Law and Gish gallop both in action, as explained previously.

Of course, it’s human nature to want to express one’s ideas. While there are limits in place to prevent criminal behaviour, these laws greatly vary from country to country and it’s not straightforward to draw a logically sound conclusion of what’s acceptable and what isn’t. Different societies will also have varying degrees of acceptance towards their own governments, as well as foreign governments.

On authoritarianism

Free speech is an effective tool to combat and resist authoritarian governments. Authoritarian governments will, by definition, be rigid and strict in terms of organising society, and often resort to mass execution and State-sponsored terror campaigns, which help them carry out their objectives even at the expense of society. In such a scenario, exposing government corruption and the ruthlessness of their grip on power can help people realise and fight government oppression.

My opinion

I’m conflicted. I disapprove of tyrannical, oppressive governments that engage in ideological purges, mass execution and terror campaigns. But I am also appalled at the events during the Capitol assault.

It would be easy to say “free speech for me but not for thee”—which is what prominent free speech proponents do when faced with their political opposition—but it is also naïve and doesn’t resolve the “freedom of speech” question.

Unlike many proponents of freedom of speech, I believe certain statements are unequivocally true or false. They can be true or false regardless of whether we know if they are. And there is a different class of arguments that may be subjective, or subject to historical and environmental interpretations.

For example, the statements below are unequivocally false:

The 2020 US Presidential Election was stolen
Bill Gates put microchips in the COVID-19 vaccine
Birds are not real; they are government drones

Some false arguments are more harmful than others. And some statements can imply the wrong conclusions. For example, if I state that “Over 99% of people who died have been found to have drunk dihydrogen monoxide within the last 6 hours” you may conclude that this is a dangerous chemical, except that’s the chemical formulation name of water: H₂O. Of course, strictly speaking, the statement is true and easy to verify. For example, we can look at the people who died in a country like Germany or England and see that the vast majority didn’t die of dehydration, and instead had ingested water in the past hours.

Unfortunately, I cannot conclude anything other than the need for speech to be regulated and for limits to be imposed. If you are the President of the United States and you build an entire political agenda on the simple idea that the election was fraudulent, fail to produce logically sound evidence, and continue with such rhetoric even after independent investigators cannot find evidence of election manipulation, then there have to be serious consequences. I can also make a strong case for terrorist campaigns seeking to destabilise nations based on religious or political ideas.

I think we as a society would be better off if we stopped talking about freedom of speech in absolute terms and instead focused our attention on the positive aspects, like free access to information and knowledge and the ability to explore culture and societies in a free manner, instead of occupying our discussions with how many and what kind of insults I am allowed to fling at the opponent.