Aurich Lawson | Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Elon Musk has claimed he’s buying Twitter to protect freedom of speech. But what does Musk mean by “freedom of speech”? Musk provided a somewhat vague answer in a tweet on Tuesday, a day after closing a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion. (The sale to Musk is pending and requires shareholder approval to complete.)
Musk’s statement, which he posted as a pinned tweet on his Twitter profile, read as follows:
By “freedom of speech” I mean simply what conforms with the law. I am against censorship that goes well beyond the law.
If people want less freedom of expression, they will ask the government to legislate accordingly. Therefore, it goes against the will of the people to go beyond the law.
Twitter has the First Amendment right to moderate tweets
There are several ways to interpret Musk’s statement as it relates to US law, specifically the First Amendment. One interpretation is that Musk doesn’t need to change Twitter at all to prevent “censorship well beyond the law.”
The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law … restricting the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceful assembly, and to seek the remedy of grievances from the Government.” The wording prevents the government from restricting speech, but courts have ruled it doesn’t prevent private companies from doing so.
In fact, judges have ruled that private companies like Twitter have a First Amendment right to moderate content. Both Florida and Texas attempted to pass laws that would force social networks like Twitter and Facebook to limit their content moderation. The judges prevented the enactment of both state statutes, ruling that the statutes violated companies’ First Amendment right to moderate their platforms.
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Free speech laws vary greatly from country to country
In that sense, Twitter’s content moderation — including limiting tweets and banning certain accounts — already complies with US free speech law. But Musk clearly thinks that Twitter’s content moderation is often a violation of freedom of speech. So his statement that free speech on Twitter should “be in accordance with the law” could mean that he believes that Twitter – like the US Congress – should not impose rules and policies that Musk sees as “censorship.”
US law doesn’t say Twitter must avoid such rules and policies, so Musk appears to want free speech beyond what US law requires. Musk could achieve his goal by changing Twitter’s policies on what types of content are prohibited and by changing the algorithms Twitter uses to promote or limit the visibility of certain tweets.
Of course, free speech laws vary from country to country, with the US being known for not having many government-imposed restrictions on people speaking their minds. Twitter faces different laws around the world – China, for example, blocks Twitter. In Europe, Twitter is faced with a new set of rules for moderating illegal and harmful content.
Musk’s statement that “if people want less freedom of expression, they will ask the government to legislate on it” does not reflect the reality of countries that significantly curtail freedom of expression. Repressive governments that severely restrict speech generally don’t do so because the people they govern “have to ask[ed] government to legislate.” Examples include China’s extensive system of internet censorship and Russia’s crackdown on reporting on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Musk recently suggested he would oppose governments demanding language restrictions, To write that “Starlink has been ordered by some governments (not Ukraine) to block Russian news sources. We will only do this at gunpoint.
But Musk’s new declaration of freedom of speech as “that which conforms with the law” suggests a different approach, in which he would be willing to restrict speech in any country where the government asks him to do so. According to Musk’s declaration of free speech, a government law banning certain types of speech is just “the will of the people.”