Why Facebook and Twitter Can’t Censor Speech

Note: This investigation is a work in progress. Check back soon for more updates!

"The rampant use of the term “censorship” for what private companies do is a serious problem. It conflates voluntary relationships with governmental force, and demolishes the clear idea of property rights in people’s minds. What Facebook and Twitter do on their platforms should always be called “moderation.” That moderation can be bad, irrational and unjust. It can be worthy of moral criticism. But it can never justify the use of regulatory force by governments.

Regulatory force does not fix the irrationality and injustice–it only replaces it with a much worse type of injustice. It “fixes” the injustice of the irrational refusal of a voluntary deal, with the injustice of an oppressive government gun. It implements the socialist idea that a person’s property is not his to control, when it becomes sufficiently productive or popular. It thus tries to unjustly erase the fact that a certain set of individuals is responsible for the existence of the popular business in the first place.

When the rights of creators over their creations are not respected–when innovators are punished for innovation rather than rewarded–innovation slows and eventually stops. When the government regulates and takes control, to that extent, you get oligarchs in place of innovators. Then, you get real censorship, in place of moderation.

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[1] When social media CEOs call for government regulation of social media, they are also very much in the wrong. They might be doing it with the misguided intention to make social media better, or as a corrupt ploy to exclude competitors. But either way, it’s just as bad–if not worse–than when others call for such regulation. Depending on what regulations they are asking for, this sort of lobbying could properly be called an attempt at censorship.

[2] Yes, the government is already pretty heavily involved in the financial industry, and yes, it does make it much harder to form start-ups to compete with established firms. But the long-term solution to this problem is not to advocate for more government regulation in other areas. This just makes things worse and more authoritarian. The solution is to advocate that government stop the regulation that it’s currently engaged in.

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Censorship Chat

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