This is an especially challenging problem because Twitter and others smuggle viewpoint discrimination into supposedly neutral content-moderation categories-primarily misinformation, incitement and hate speech. Laptop story was suppressed as “misinformation.” Claims that the Democrats stole the presidency in 2020 are censored, while claims that Russia did the same in 2016 go untouched-and of course the truthful Tweets supporting the burning of police precinct houses. Tweets calling for the destruction of Israel and Conservative opinions about transgenderism are censored as “attacks” on a “protected group.” Conservative views on Covid are flagged as “misinformation.” In May 2020, Twitter censored as a “glorification of violence” President Trump’s “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweet, while leaving untouched Nearly everyone agrees that social-media platforms shouldn’t engage in viewpoint discrimination-including the platforms themselves, which deny they do so. One kind of restriction, however, is forbidden: viewpoint discrimination.
If you’re a visitor in someone else’s home, he’s free to kick you out simply for offending him.īetween these poles are “limited public forums”-places generally open to the public where speech can be subjected to reasonable regulation. At the other end of the spectrum is private property. But Twitter isn’t a public forum, most obviously because it isn’t run by the government (even though its censorship is sometimes at official behest). Speech protection is strongest in a “public forum.” If Twitter were such a forum, almost all content blocking would be an impermissible prior restraint. The first step to solving these conundrums is to recognize that different free-speech principles apply in different contexts, and there are three key different kinds of forums.