In the News
Wall Street Journal: 10 Things for Elon Musk to Do at Twitter
By Bradley A. Smith
I wouldn’t dream of telling Elon Musk, who recently became Twitter’s top shareholder, how to turn a profit. But I do know something about free speech. If Mr. Musk is serious about making the social-media behemoth a force for free speech, here are 10 things he can do:
- Leave more content up. Twitter has rules about posts, and the bulk of enforcement is done through artificial intelligence. The algorithms err on the side of taking down material that might violate Twitter rules. Instead, they should err on the side of leaving questionable material up until there has been human review.
- More aggressively screen complaints. Currently, there is too much bad-faith reporting done for the purpose of getting controversial, but legitimate, content taken down. For every 10 content moderators tasked with taking down content, hire a content defender, whose job is to advocate for keeping or putting content back up. Err on the side of speech, not censorship.
Bucks County Courier Times: Judge allows conspiracy charge to remain in lawsuit against Pennsbury, but grants some of district’s requests
By Ashley R. Williams
A federal court judge this week dismissed some motions in the in a lawsuit against the Pennsbury School District that began last October over its handling of public comments at school board meetings.
Pennsbury residents…filed suit six months ago, accusing the Pennsbury School Board of enforcing unconstitutional free speech policies at board meetings. The policies in question in the case were outlined in Pennsbury’s Policy 903…
The lawsuit outlines several instances of alleged censoring or stifling of free speech by the plaintiffs during past public comment periods of the school district’s in-person and virtual school board meetings.
Free Expression
Washington Post: The left learns the limits of corporate power
By Megan McArdle
It seems only yesterday that the left reliably opposed the idea of corporations getting involved in politics. To say that something was backed by big business was as much as to say it was bad for the republic. The phrase “Citizens United,” the Supreme Court decision that enshrined a corporate right to political speech, was essentially invective.
But, over time, progressives established a power base among the young professionals staffing major corporations, and now they eagerly push companies to stake out positions on issues of the day, from climate change to LGBTQ rights to guns. Many of their campaigns have been successful, which is why more and more product categories — do you eat at Chick-fil-A or Popeyes? — are getting divided along partisan lines.
And now, they are trying to sunder Disney from its cozy relationship with the state government of Florida — an effort that won’t work, except possibly to entrench the conservative politicians whose votes they are trying to change. In the process, the left may finally learn what conservatives used to know: The corporate power they once so feared is much less fearsome than they imagine.
Sludge: Nonprofit Group Takes Aim at Foreign Money in Politics
By Donald Shaw
Now, a nonprofit called Free Speech for People is working to advance legislation at the local, state, and federal levels that would prohibit foreign-influenced corporations from spending money on politics in the U.S. Under the definition in their model legislation, companies where a single foreign investor owns or controls one percent or more of its total shares, equity, or other ownership interest would be considered foreign-influenced and would be prohibited from making political expenditures or donating to political committees or nonprofits that spend money in U.S. elections. The ban would also apply to companies where two or more foreign investors own, in aggregate, stakes worth five percent or more. According to Free Speech for People, the bills would prevent virtually all S&P 500 companies from spending from their treasuries on politics in the U.S., though those companies would still be allowed to sponsor employee-funded PACs that could make political donations.
Just Security: Reclaim the First Amendment — Harvard Law Review Address
By Jameel Jaffer
In everyday conversation, we tend to talk about the First Amendment as if it were something fixed, something we’ve inherited. First Amendment advocates often say they’re “defending” the First Amendment, or “protecting” the First Amendment—phrases that suggest, again, that the First Amendment is something stable—something that’s already been won and that now needs only to be preserved. But if we want the First Amendment to serve democratic interests rather than private ones—if we want it be a check on power, rather than a tool of it—then First Amendment doctrine has to be attentive to new forms of power, and new ways in which power is being exercised. It needs to be attentive to evolving technology, new business models, and changing social practices.
New York Times: I’m a Conservative Professor Who Opposed Safe Spaces. I Was Wrong.
By Jon A. Shields
Like other conservative professors who are advocates of free speech on campus, I once opposed efforts to create a classroom climate in which students are protected from speech they find emotionally upsetting, ranging from “microaggressions” to political perspectives that diverge from current liberal orthodoxy. Efforts to create these “safe spaces” seemed, to me, to infantilize students by insulating them from speech they found the least bit upsetting. After all, an unquestioned objective of a liberal education, I supposed, was to make students uncomfortable. Now I think that while we certainly shouldn’t be preoccupied with policing microaggressions or silencing contrarian viewpoints, we need to take the comfort of students far more seriously.
Online Speech Platforms
Axios: The next great free speech debate
By Jim VandeHei
We want to prepare you for the next frontier in America’s free speech argument: putting the power of what you read, see and hear in your hands alone.
The concept carries a pedestrian name: the “decentralized” web, or “web3.” But its consequences are profound — rewiring the very foundation of social media and speech policing.
New York Times: Pinterest bans climate misinformation from posts and ads.
By Tiffany Hsu
Pinterest will prohibit ads and posts that feature climate misinformation in its latest attempt to block harmful content on its virtual pinboard service, the company said on Wednesday.
The ban includes any content that denies the existence or impacts of climate change, or denies that humans influence global warming and that the phenomenon is supported by scientific consensus.
The States
By Peter Callaghan
A Minnesota Senate bill would close the door to an exclusive political club that never actually opened.
One sentence in the omnibus bill, Senate File 3975, would ban contributions to any club set up by a political committee of a candidate or a political caucus of the Legislature that provides access to lawmakers.
State law already prohibits contributions to lawmakers during legislative sessions. But a mysterious request made to the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board in September suggested a loophole around that ban: charging membership dues to a club that provides access to Capitol decision-makers.
