The First Amendment is Not Your Right to Freedom of Speech

The first amendment is not your right to freedom of speech. The first amendment is simply a limitation on the government. That limitation is the legal protection to ensure that a government does not suppress your speech.

A popular argument is that since the first amendment only applies to the government, companies like Facebook and YouTube can limit your speech. It is their company and product, they have the freedom to say what is and is not allowed to happen.

That is only partially true.

What is Behind the First Amendment?

Freedom of Speech is a basic human right. Any conversation about rights has to take into account one basic question: where do your rights come from?

Of course the founding fathers in America believed, mostly, that your rights come from God and preexisted government. Atheists have a problem with this idea as they do not believe in the existence of a being known as God.

Yet even an Atheist can find utility in the idea that your rights come from outside of the human sphere. If your rights come from something beyond human authority than the idea follows that no human authority is justified in taking those rights away from you.

The individual’s rights flow from some greater force (call it God or Nature or whatever you like), along with free will, to use as they see fit. Part of living in a civilized society means that as an individual you decided that you are okay giving up part of what makes you an individualistic creature in order to fit into society and to help it function.

Liberty and freedom does not mean the absence of rules and limits, but it means the application of those rules and limits that help foster the greatest amount of freedom for the individual. This is getting a little off the topic of freedom of speech, but it needs to be said.

Freedom of speech is so important in this aspect because it is the method we, as individuals, use to determine what those rules and limits are that guarantee the maximum amount of freedom. Of course this means we need to be free to say stupid, offensive, and harsh things regardless of how it makes others feel.

Throughout history we can find examples of where the truth or what is viewed as right today was seen as offensive. The idea that slavery was immoral was offensive to most of the world at one point. It was also seen as offensive to think that people should have the right to self-determination and should not be tied to the land owned by a lord or king.

In order to say what you think in the pursuit of truth you must be willing to risk being offensive. You also have the responsibility to allow others to be offensive to you in their pursuit of truth.

Facebook, YouTube, and Free Speech

The popular argument is that Facebook and YouTube are their own companies and should have the freedom to do with their service as they see fit. I would agree with that to some extent, a company has the freedom to decide the scope of their business.

I am not entitled to the property or labor of another individual. Yet the right to freedom of speech is a right owned by the individual and that right can be oppressed by more than just the government.

Companies like Facebook need to make a choice, are they going to be a platform (a place where people can speak and thus be obligated to uphold the individual’s right to freedom of speech) or are they going to be a publisher (a place that edits and approves the type of speech allowed).

For a private company there are problems with both. If it is a platform you run the risk of people saying offensive and hurtful things that you and the majority of individuals do not agree with or like, which could lead them to leaving your platform. The benefit would be that you are not responsible for the things other people say.

For example, if I say something hurtful or derogatory over the phone, it is not AT&T’s fault that I said those things while using their service, the individual is responsible for their own actions.

Yet if they are a publisher and have a say in what does and does not gets published than they can be held liable for things being said by users of Facebook. They might be able to keep the outrage police happy for some time but policing one billion users every day will be an increasingly difficult task.

They can hand over more and more freedom but will only get an exponentially decreasing return in security. At some point due to stifling the individual’s free speech, the rise of competitors, and the increase in cost of policing their platform, Facebook will no long be able to function at a profit and will cease to exist.

Note: when I say free speech I do not mean free from all limits, but free speech within the currently established legal limits for speech in a public square.

The Hecklers Veto

The first amendment is a limit on the government is the same argument ‘protesters’ use to shut down speeches on college campuses or political campaign rallies. They apply pressure to event coordinators and location owners in the hope that they will stop people from speaking.

They do this by falsely labeling people alt-right or neo Nazi, getting local papers to publish stories spreading these false claims, and if that does not work protests will be organized and violence with be threatened.

In Portland Oregon threats of violence were used to shut down a local annual parade. Protesters disrupted a talk at PSU by James Damore by damaging sound equipment. Protesters silenced speaker Christina Hoff Sommers as well at Lewis and Clark Law School.

It is true that the first amendment is only a limit on the power of the government. Yet the right that this limit protects supersedes government.

Individuals have a right to free speech and it does not matter if it is the tyranny of the tyrant, majority or minority that is trying to oppress that right, it is still the suppression of a human right whose oppression should be odious to all freedom loving people.