Social media companies, including TikTok, Snap, and Twitter, caused people in France to riot and so the government should shut them down, say French President Emmanuel Macron and the European Union’s top censor, Thierry Breton.
Said Macron, “When things get out of hand, we may have to regulate them or cut [social networks] off.” The reason, Breton explained today, is that “Social media didn’t do enough” to remove “content that is hateful, that calls to revolt and to kill.” Warned Breton, “If they don’t do it, they will be sanctioned immediately.”
The comments made by Macron and Breton are shocking, and anybody who cares about freedom of speech should denounce them as a clear and present threat to the fundamental human right to freedom of expression as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the French Constitution, and the European Constitution.
It’s true that there are legal protections for removing “content that is hateful, that calls to revolt and to kill.” Such immediate incitement to violence is even illegal in the United States, which has much stronger free speech protections than France and Europe.
Government pro-censorship arguments are hilarious…
When Judge Terry Doughty issued an injunction in Missouri v. Biden that banned the government from “specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression”, all hell broke loose.
Evelyn Douek, a Stanford law professor, formerly of the Knight First Amendment Institute, warned that preventing the government from colluding with corporations to censor citizens would have a “chilling effect on communication between the government and platforms.”
In traditional free speech jurisprudence, ‘chilling effects’ were inflicted by the government, but Douek is worried that free speech might have a chilling effect on government censorship. After advocating, in cases like Lamont v. Postmaster General, that any interference with speech, no matter how odious including, in the aforementioned Supreme Court case, asking recipients of Communist propaganda to affirmatively agree to receive it, entailed a ‘chilling effect’, liberals don’t want to chill the censors, instead they’re worried that civil rights will chill censorship.
Even though it’s the height of summer, chilling effects on censorship were on display.
Liberals who might have once worried about free speech now fret that the government will be inhibited from censoring free speech. According to CNN, “Legal experts say that the order is overly broad and scholars on online misinformation warned that it could have a chilling effect on the government’s efforts to curtail lies about public health emergencies and elections.”
All around the world, they’re worried that ordinary people will figure out what’s being done to them, and organize in response. That’s why they’re constantly trying to make that less likely and more difficult.
The last 3 years were tough and I'm afraid what's yet to come. pic.twitter.com/DiqnW55JP9
— Dr. Simon Goddek (@goddeketal) July 10, 2023
Social networks will be obliged to immediately delete “hateful content” or “which call for revolt” under penalty of being cut off.
BREAKING: European Commissioner Thierry Breton announces that from August 25, social networks will be obliged to immediately delete “hateful content” or “which call for revolt” under penalty of being cut off on the territory
BREAKING: European Commissioner Thierry Breton announces that from August 25, social networks will be obliged to immediately delete "hateful content" or "which call for revolt" under penalty of being cut off on the territory ⚠️⚠️⚠️ pic.twitter.com/F3JYEPPwZd
— THEWATCHTOWERS (@THEWATCHTOWERS) July 10, 2023
h/t Glenn