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The Supreme Court is hearing two cases this week that could change the way we think about free speech online. Both Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamne are asking the court to reconsider how the law interprets Section 230, a provision that shields companies from legal liability for user-generated content. Gizmodo will be releasing a series of articles on the past, present and future of online speech.

Tumblr has a problem. It is “called the ana community, ana is short for anorexia,” Tumblr CEO Matt Mullenweg said in a recent interview. People have used the social media site to encourage eating disorders and give advice on how to avoid eating. “It’s not illegal,” Mullenweg said, “but as a technology platform, “you have an obligation to control the distribution of this, suppress it if people post it, and try to provide them with pointers to resources.” That’s exactly what the Tumblr content moderation team did: censorship.

The pro-ana issue is a simple example of censorship that most people would agree with, but our desire to suppress content goes much further. In fact, you could argue that effective censorship is the only reason for the success of social media and technology platforms. According to The Verge’s Nilay Patel, “content moderation is a product” that social media companies make. They filter out what you don’t want to see and display content you’ll like. It is not limited to the network. Burying some materials and restricting others is necessary for a functioning society.

The truth is that you love censorship just like everyone else. The only question is whether you are ready to admit it.

“Everyone is complaining about censorship,” Marjorie Haynes, a First Amendment lawyer and founder of the Free Speech Politics Project, told Gizmodo. “But at the same time, almost everyone wants to gloss over things they find really offensive or violating their morals.”

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Today, content moderation is controversial, especially on the right, in large part due to Google, Meta, and Twitter’s clumsy, too-little-too-late response to misinformation about COVID-19 and the 2020 election. But many of the loudest complaints about censorship in big tech come from people who are happy to silence ideas they don’t like in other contexts.

Tucker Carlson often scolds Silicon Valley for “controlling what you are now allowed to think and say in America.” All the while, he’s been howling about politically correct changes to M&M’s advertising mascots for the past year. “Green M&M, you’ll notice, doesn’t wear sexy boots anymore,” Carlson said in one breathless tirade, blaming the Mars Corporation for going left by introducing lollipops he doesn’t want to sleep with. Carlson promised to “begin a deeper investigation” into the plan of the “awakened” candy dealer, but M&M’s abandoned their mascots, which the TV presenter noted as a personal victory.

Elon Musk is another example. For a moment, Musk was hailed as the champion of the world’s “free speech absolutists,” a term he regularly (and inaccurately) uses to describe his views. But immediately, Musk began blocking critical journalists and tweaked the app’s algorithm to promote Twitter Blue followers while downvoting those who don’t pay $8 a month for protection.

Here is an obvious counterargument. I’m not saying that censorship is generally good. First, social networks are accused of blocking the accounts of activists and oppressed minorities. Badly! I want to say that censorship is a bad word for a neutral thing. Some censorship is good and some censorship is bad, but it’s something we rely on and enjoy.

Lately, the free speech debate has rallied around political issues like elections or the response to the pandemic, but you can also find people trying to defend or censor speech in areas that seem more personal. Back in the 90s, video games, TV and hip-hop raised issues of violence and pornography in the media, and the debate was not divided along party lines. Out-of-control political correctness was a hot topic in the conservative media, while left-wing members of the feminist movement argued that all pornography should be banned.

Problems reached even the courts. “First Amendment law has collapsed such that violent content is almost always protected, unless it reaches the level of a real threat or incitement. Whereas sexual content has been censored to these very vague standards of obscenity for a long time,” Hines said.

We have settled on a system that is largely flexible, although it often does not satisfy even policy makers. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breuer once complained that a modern interpretation of the First Amendment would only ban a violent video game depicting a tortured woman if she was also topless. But while we may all disagree with the actual rules, few believe that there should be no restrictions on pornography or media violence.

Censoring certain types of content actually promotes free speech. Let’s say the hate speech issue on Twitter got even more out of hand than it does now. People of color are likely to feel less and less comfortable speaking their minds for fear of being attacked. They will censor themselves. If you choose to censor hate speech, you are choosing to silence some voices in order to amplify others.

Anyone who doesn’t like it can say, “Sorry, that’s not my problem,” but Twitter aims to create an environment where everyone can join in the conversation. And more importantly, people want Twitter to be just that.

We often hear about the utopian vision of a “marketplace of ideas”, a world where everyone is allowed to have their say, and the best ideas rise to the top thanks to the wonders of the mind and capitalism. Sounds great, but it’s not what 99% of people are actually looking for in a technology platform.

“There is a lot of First Amendment protected material that most people don’t want to see on social media,” said Stephen Bates, a professor of First Amendment law and censorship at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. . “Their goal is to make people happy and engaged. As long as corporations want to maximize profits, censorship will go beyond what the First Amendment requires.”

4Chan and Gab are great illustrations. There is little to no content moderation on these platforms. What do people do with this freedom? They host pornography that is legally questionable if not explicitly prohibited, they organize bullying campaigns, and they talk a lot about the letter N. 4chan at least puts out a few good memes from time to time, but these sites are well outside the mainstream. It may seem shocking, but most people don’t like being on sites full of racist slurs and upsetting content. This is not a space that most people want to live in on a regular basis.

Guess where people want to hang out: TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are hard-moderated, snow-white platforms whose channels are run by algorithms that work hard to figure out what you do and don’t want to see.

“In general, I think people want things to be censored and they’re happy that it’s happening,” said David Brodie, Digital Justice Initiative’s managing attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights Under Law. “The problem is that there are many things that are closely related to our political and social divisions. That’s where things get complicated.”

The only question is where we should draw the line. At the very least, most people are on the same wavelength. I don’t know anyone who thinks it’s okay to recruit terrorists on Facebook or post sexually explicit material on YouTube’s kids section. On the other hand, I’m sure we can all agree that you should be able to say whatever you want about Reddit taxes, political or otherwise.

In the middle, things get a lot more complicated. Should you be allowed to post lies about the COVID-19 vaccine on social media? Many say yes and many say no. One thing is certain, this is a decision that people like Mark Zuckerberg wish they didn’t have to make. In 2019, Zuckerberg said, “I believe people should decide what is trustworthy, not tech companies.” One good reason he thinks so is that being the arbiter of truth is not good for his business.

Meta, Google and Twitter are large multinational corporations. If there’s one thing big corporations hate, it’s arguing about their business practices. These giant technology platforms would like every person in America to be a happy and engaged member of their community. The tech industry really doesn’t want to make decisions that will infuriate millions of people.

However, all major technology platforms use censorship to some extent. Why? Because that’s what their users and their advertisers want. This is what the profit-based model requires.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has been embroiled in tougher content moderation on his platform. After years of arguing that free speech is the most important ideal to uphold on Twitter, Dorsey was forced to abandon a largely hands-off approach as harassment, misinformation and hate speech boiled over on the platform. Twitter moved to oust the Nazis and lead-poisoned QAnon supporters that flourished on the app, and eventually became the first to ban Donald Trump for his support of the January 6 uprising. Dorsey recently said he’s changed his mind again, claiming his content moderation efforts were a well-intentioned mistake.

All the sleepless nights that Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and now Elon Musk have spent worrying about these issues show just how complex the problem is. But one thing is clear: no reasonable person really believes that censorship shouldn’t exist, and most of us happily call for it on one occasion or another.

There are many, many exceptions to the First Amendment, but in general it gives you the freedom to say what you want, about almost anything, without government interference. The Americans seem to love it. But on the Internet, these rules don’t apply, and that’s the way it should be. If you start to incite hatred in the comments to this article, we will block you. I do not like? Run your own website because everyone wants it here.

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