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| Carlos Barria/Reuters |
“Free speech is not an absolute human right,” Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a member of Facebook’s Oversight Board and former prime minister of Denmark, told Politico today. “It has to be balanced with other human rights.”
We hear similar arguments all the time in the United States. What competing “human right” does Schmidt believe unfettered free expression undermines? Does she believe we have a human right not to be insulted or hated? Does she believe we have a human right to hear only our preferred pronouns? Or a human right to avoid “disinformation?” She does not say.
Years ago, newspapers would defend free-expression rights of Nazis (real ones) who wanted to march in neighborhoods populated by Holocaust survivors. Today, they publish 8,600-word essays making the case that we should stop our “zealous” adherence to the First Amendment. “It’s an article of faith in the United States that more speech is better and that the government should regulate it as little as possible,” Emily Bazelon wrote in the New York Times Magazine headlined “The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation” just last year. “But increasingly, scholars of constitutional law, as well as social scientists, are beginning to question the way we have come to think about the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. They think our formulations are simplistic — and especially inadequate for our era.” --->READ MORE HERE
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| Susan Walsh/AP |
White House press secretary Jen Psaki casually confirmed on Thursday what skeptical conservatives and some civil libertarians have been suspecting for years: that the world’s biggest speech platforms take direction from the government in choosing what content to suppress, amplify, or remove.
“We are in regular touch with social media platforms” about COVID-19 related misinformation, including misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine,” Psaki said. “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook.”
On Friday, she suggested social media companies should be working together to ban misinformation super spreaders from multiple platforms.
This is a startling admission. It was backed up by a 22-page “health misinformation” guidance issued by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, in which he urged the social media platforms to “impose clear consequences for accounts that repeatedly violate platform policies.” --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to related stories and resources:
: Sebelius: Unvaccinated Americans Should Not Be Allowed to Work, Have Access to Children
Survey finds 1.84M have turned down jobs to collect unemployment benefits
USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates
WSJ: Coronavirus Live Updates
YAHOO NEWS: Coronavirus Live Updates
NEW YORK POST: Coronavirus The Latest
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