I would like to think I share with Elon Musk some of his alleged passion for freedom of speech. That is all that I share with Mr Musk. I do not, for example, have his rapacious drive to accumulate all the world’s money. More pertinently, I do not share his apparent belief that freedom of speech is an “absolute”. And I do not equate freedom of speech with the right to a platform.
Let me attend to the “absolute” point, first. I don’t want to be mistaken for one of those people who only believe in their own freedom of speech, and who will, for example, block anyone on Twitter who ventures a, to me, unholy thought. Not of course that Mr Musk would do that.
It is just that I regard freedom of speech as carrying attendant responsibilities with it. And so, it seems does the law. Here is what the European Convention on Human Rights says about it:
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.”
That second paragraph is important. It reserves to the State the right, on limited grounds, to impose curbs on our freedom to sound off. It is not, decidedly not, absolute.
The US Constitution does, it is true, appear to take a perhaps more childishly simple approach, in its first amendment”
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
But even in this context, the ninth amendment offers a measure of compromise”
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Mr Musk would presumably not agree, but I think that some restrictions on freedom of speech are desirable. For example, I don’t think that a man, however rich, should be able to get away with calling someone a “pedo” in a public forum unless he can back that up with evidence. Careers have been lost on the back of groundless allegations of that kind and, frankly, to try to justify it as “banter” is only to add insult to injury. But I would go further. By all means have your freedom to believe whatever you choose in the privacy of your own head, but when you start bandying about conspiracy theories that undermine public health or public safety, you need to be able to be called to order.
And there may be times when, because of your position in the world, and the number of people who will mindlessly adopt whatever crackpot nonsense you spout, if you demonstrate that you cannot be trusted to use your power to communicate with care you need to have it taken away until you can, just as you would not trust a small child to drive a performance car on a public highway.
And it is here that the word “platform” raises it hand and asks to address the court.
Because it has become the beef of some people, and I think Mr Musk may be one of them, that the right to freedom of speech embraces the right to be listened to: the right, in a word, to a platform. And I think that is not just wrong, but unsupported by law anywhere and for good reason.
What I seem to see, and I may be wrong, is that the bogus claim to a right to a platform – usually dressed up in the victimhood of having been denied a platform – “no-platformed” – is pretty much the preserve of celebrity. There are, I recognise, cases that go the other way, of teachers and lecturers prevented from teaching or lecturing in their field because what they have to impart is not deemed acceptable by some pressure group. I deprecate that, with the caveat that nobody has the right to impart a view without facing a legitimate challenge to the validity of that view.
But what we tend to hear instead is the bleating of people who have been told they are not welcome to present their views in a public setting. And paradoxically, we can hear the bleating because they have a platform elsewhere from which to shout their woes. We see politicians using the pages of politically friendly newspapers and journals to complain that their views are being suppressed by “woke lefties”. We hear loud-mouthed TV presenters using their airtime to bang on about how they cannot use their airtime to bang on about the fact that they are not allowed to bang on about this or that.
None of them seems to see the irony in the fact that, so far from being silenced, they have a special privilege that allows them to broadcast what they will.
You and I don’t have that privilege. I mean, yes, I can write this opinion piece and post it on my blog. But I can’t demand, and cannot expect, that any newspaper, periodical, radio or TV station, conference or ceremony will let me air my views. So why should mere celebrity or wealth entitle you to demand to be heard in these forums? Being “denied” a platform in this sense simply sets you down among the generality of the population and you can have no justifiable complaint about that. Equality of deprivation is still equality.
And so we come to Twitter and Facebook. These are “social” platforms. In an exception to what I have just argued, they provide the space for just about anyone to give vent to his or her freedom of expression. Does that mean that they can have no boundaries? If they attempt to impose limits on what you can say is that censorship? Does it infringe your Article 10 rights?
It is a close call but I believe, as the drafters of Article 10 clearly believed, that some limits are not only desirable but essential. You cannot have a peeved ex-President of unfettered ego and very confined intellect inciting insurrection and personal violence among his cerebrally challenged fan base simply because Nanny says he lost the election. You cannot have a third rate actor and singer taking to the ether to peddle totally fallacious claims of conspiracy against reputable scientists trying to fight a pandemic. And you cannot have a super-rich individual, or a tyrant, using the platform to skew markets, or electorates, for his or her personal gain at the expense of everyone else.. These are more than opinions or beliefs, even if sincerely held. They are dangerous to life, and to living it in freedom.
That anyway is how I see it. I am not an absolutist. I will follow freedom of expression a long way down a road which embraces discourtesy, offensiveness and simple wrong-headedness. These can all be answered or ignored. But a line must be drawn when we reach the use or attempted use of a channel of communication to do, or to incite, or to put someone in fear of, actual harm. And if people do not accept and respect the existence of that line then to my mind they must forfeit the privilege, for such it is, of using the medium in question.
