The Commotion of Free Speech in the Digital Age

Padmaja Rengamannar | November 17th, 2020

The fiasco of the 2020 American elections has highlighted some of the flaws and confusions around free speech in our increasingly digital media landscape. The advent of social media has indeed given us “more access to information” but at what cost (1)? Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have radically transformed the way we disseminate information. Long-form journalism has been in decline and quick bite-sized infographics and headlines have taken over. Social media has not only made accessing information easier but producing information has become effortless and instantaneous as well. Anyone with a phone and a Twitter account can post their opinions about political matters such as the US elections or COVID-19. Free speech, according to Article 19 entrenched in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights entails that, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (2). Similarly, the First Amendment of the American Constitution guarantees the protection of free speech and expression whereby, “Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” (3).

In the digital age, the dissemination of information has become frenzied and the internet is saturated with information leaving us feeling overwhelmed. There have been calls for more fact-checking on social media platforms, to stifle the spread of misinformation or notoriously known as “fake news”. During the US elections, President Donald Trump posted a barrage of tweets making brash claims about election fraud and that he had won the US Presidential elections. In response, Twitter displayed an interesting mechanism, whereby it demarcated some of these posts as “disputed” information, suggesting that falsehoods were being propagated. “Fake news and false rumours reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories” (4). Fake news possesses a seductive aura that rapidly gains popularity because of the kind of emotion it tends to evoke - anger, surprise and disgust, bound to create unnecessary anxiety and moral panic.

This is where the crux of the commotion of free speech in the digital age lies. What ideas should or should not be given oxygen? Do social media platforms have an obligation to the truth like the Government and news outlets? Should social media companies like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram take it into their hands to protect individuals’ free speech rights and curb the dissemination of fake news? Or should they continue providing a non-interfering space for free speech where users can make their deductions? The pandemic has resulted in an astounding surge of information that has made it challenging to govern the kind of information that gains traction. Following this, Twitter has founded new policies and product changes “to add context, encourage thoughtful consideration, and reduce the potential for misleading information to spread on Twitter” (5). This has produced fairly significant changes with “an estimated 29% decrease in Quote Tweets of... labelled Tweets due in part to a prompt that warned people prior to sharing” (6). The aforementioned “Quote Tweets” is one of the recent product changes Twitter has introduced to replace the retweeting function in hopes of encouraging individual commentaries. This “gave people an extra moment to consider why and what they were adding to the conversation” creating a disruptive impact on the way we have conversations (7). In this manner, Twitter has used legal doctrines of free speech as “a guide” to control the spread of fake news while maintaining individuals’ rights to freedom of speech and expression (8).

Social media platforms are progressively becoming politicized. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated the deep-rooted social and political issues in our world and we have taken to social media, to come together and have a conversation. While doing so, however, some ideas have proven to be ineffective and dangerous even. For instance, President Trump’s disputed claims about election fraud and misinformation on COVID-19 have gained plenty of traction because of his large following. It appears as though these ideas will continue to reverberate in the future of American and global politics, of which the implications are yet to be seen. One crucial point to pay attention to is the fact that social media platforms, and therefore our conversations, are dynamic. This implicates that our problems and solutions regarding free speech and the kind of conversations we engage in are dynamic as well. In part, what this challenge perhaps requires is to make timely alterations to the existing modus operandi. Nevertheless, the extent to which social media platforms should interfere in the conversations we have today is highly contested and will likely continue to be one of our biggest digital challenges regarding free speech.

Endnotes

1.Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner, "Why a Free Press Matters," The Atlantic, last modified August 16, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/why-a-free-press-matters/567676/.

2. UN General Assembly, "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" 217 (III) A, (Paris, 1948), https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/.

3. Legal Information Institute "First Amendment," LII / Legal Information Institute, accessed November 16, 2020, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment.

4. Robinson Meyer, "The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News," The Atlantic, last modified March 8, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/largest-study-ever-fake-news-mit-twitter/555104/.

5. Vijaya Gadde and Kayvon Beykpour, "An Update on Our Work Around the 2020 US Elections," Blog, last modified November 12, 2020, https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/2020-election-update.html.

6. Gadde and Beykpour, "An Update on Our Work Around the 2020 US Elections."

7. Gadde and Beykpour, "An Update on Our Work Around the 2020 US Elections."

8. Kaitlyn Tiffany, "Twitter’s Next Trump Problem," The Atlantic, last modified November 12, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/11/will-twitter-ban-trump-in-2021/617071/.