God Speed! All Else Be Damned!

First, it thinks free speech rights are derived from the government, as though if we didn’t have the First Amendment, we wouldn’t have any right to speak at all. A classic brain-rot explanation of human rights, which are ... actually inalienable. If I were alone on a deserted island with someone pushing me out to sea for mere words, it would still be a violation of my personhood, even if we were governed by no human laws. (They would have a right not to listen to me, but not to expel me or prevent me from speaking whatever thoughts enter my head.) There is functionally little difference between a global corporation telling you that you do not have the right to be heard and a government doing it at the point of a gun. Modern liberalism has just made a “nicer” way of enforcing the status quo, and explainers like this comic give cover for all kinds of bad actors. 

The latest reasoning is “We cannot let disinformation spread.” Disinformation creates false narratives that could lead to real-life violence, the logic goes. And given the meme of election fraud claims directly leading to the Capitol riot, it seems “just so.” Suppressing disinformation must be a worthy goal. And yet, literally today, China banned the BBC. What was their reasoning? That the BBC had propagated “false reporting” and “fake news” about the Uighurs and China’s role in not releasing timely information about the coronavirus. To protect its people from disinformation, China got rid of it, using liberal-y wishy-washy alarm about making sure “disinformation” isn’t allowed to spread. It’s the flipside of Trump’s “fake news,” of course, but rather than presenting arguments that establish facts in a neutral, accountable way that everyone can participate in, the first instinct of China and New York Times reporters alike is, “Um, get rid of that, please.” It is a problem.

Now, another example: Materially, what is the difference between China banning, say, Google, and Google agreeing, in order to do business in China, to eliminate search functionality for stories that criticize the Chinese government? What is the material difference between the government saying, “Our system of thought is correct; all dissidents are wrong and dangerous,” and a blend of financial and tech corporations deciding “our system of thought is correct; all dissidents are wrong and dangerous -- and yes, this happens to align with the government’s view” unilaterally? When they are the ones funding the bloat of Washington and Wall Street and billionaires’ interests? It’s almost as though ... free speech is not about protecting us from government coercion but a human right that we each have to defend on an individual basis, especially (maybe more so!) against systems that are not accountable to the public, that can claim their censorship algorithms are proprietary and cannot be shared, and who are willing to adjust their algorithms somewhat depending on which government they are doing business with.