The Free Speech Industry

<p>From the earliest days of the commercial Internet, techno-libertarians asserted that cyberspace was the true home of free speech, an assertion inevitably wrapped in antiregulatory sentiment. Tech companies invoked the laissez-faire principles of the First Amendment to justify their failure to address extremism and abuse, elevating passivity into a virtue. Perhaps most seductively, companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter appeared to provide “free speech” in a dual sense: free from censorship and free from cost. But as the world is increasingly coming to recognize, there is nothing free about what the tech industry is offering. For tech companies, “free speech” is “free labor,” a commodity created by “users” to sell to other “users.” Far from being uncensored, speech online is filtered, arranged, promoted, altered, and labeled in accordance with corporate interests. In exchange for the illusion of free expression, multi-billion-dollar corporations extract troves of personal data from individuals to be used for marketing, advertising, and surveillance purposes. The relentless pursuit of “engagement” means that there is a premium placed on extreme, polarizing content, including vicious harassment, sexual exploitation, and dangerous disinformation. The tech industry’s commercialization of “free speech” has also contributed greatly to the American public’s misunderstanding of the meaning and scope of the First Amendment. In particular, it has created confusion about to whom, to what, and how the First Amendment applies. The invocation of the First Amendment and free speech in the text of Section 230 further confuses the issue for legislators and courts as well as the general public. The concept of free speech that emerges from this confusion is impoverished, commodified, and passive. Far from unleashing the radical and revolutionary power of free speech, the free speech industry tends to tame free speech and cement the status quo. While the anti-regulatory, pro-corporation, techno-utopian system enabled by Section 230 immunity generates enormous capital, both literal and symbolic, the vast majority of that capital stays firmly in the hands of those who have always had more of it than everyone else: the wealthy, the white, the male. While Section 230 does help amplify free speech, increase profits, and enable informational dominance for the powerful and the privileged, it also assists in the silencing, bankrupting, and subordination of the vulnerable.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br></p>