Late in Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) dodged a question about whether he and running mate Donald Trump would accept the 2024 election results by pivoting to a favorite topic: what he called the “censorship” of Americans by social media companies, terming it “a much bigger threat to democracy.”
His statement drew on a years-long Republican contention that Silicon Valley tech giants have suppressed conservative views on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. That narrative has underpinned congressional hearings, Republican fundraising campaigns, the dismantling of academic research centers, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, state laws seeking to restrict online content moderation, and multiple lawsuits that reached the Supreme Court this year.
But is it true? Well, yes and no, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Conservatives and Trump supporters are indeed more likely to have their posts on major social media platforms taken down or their accounts suspended than are liberals and Joe Biden supporters, researchers from Oxford University, MIT and other institutions found. But that doesn’t necessarily mean content moderation is biased.
“Free speech” does not mean free from consequences. It seems to be very difficult for some people to understand this.
If you say something on social media which the company deems against TOS, they have every right to bump you. It is not a public forum, regardless of what misunderstanding people may have. It is the digital equivalent of a private company kicking you out of the store for yelling obscenities at customers.
I really dislike this phrasing because it does mean freedom from consequences, but only from the government, not private actors like these companies or the general public. The sentiment should really be “free speech does not mean freedom from social backlash” but I know that’s not as catchy…
(Also, yes, free speech does have limits (e.g. hate speech, ‘fighting words’, etc).)
I find it a perfectly fitting liberal screed, combining the archetypical ignorance, condescension, and just below the surface of the skin fascism.
But yes, that’s what the saying should be.