FIRE comment on Free Speech, Elon Musk and Twitter. An Excerpt:
In the neverending debate surrounding Twitter under Elon Musk, the distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value can get confused.
Free speech culture is a set of norms that support free thought and our ability to share our opinions. These are norms that see value in curiosity, dissent, devil’s advocacy, thought experimentation, and talking across lines of difference; where our first instinct in response to speech we dislike isn’t to find a way to censor it — or “cancel” the speaker — but to meet it with more speech. To defeat ideas we oppose with better ones. These are norms that can be advanced at all levels of society, from the average citizen to the largest corporation.
The idea is that we cannot reap the benefits of the First Amendment’s protection for free speech in a society where citizens are legally able to speak freely but few of them do so. A college can, for example, promise its students and faculty “the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.” But if the culture doesn’t support those values, what do they matter? As Judge Learned Hand put it: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.”
FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff notes of the moment: “The transformation of free speech from an inspiring, even romantic democratic ideal into a bogeyman provoking hostility and suspicion is the product of a very intentional campaign originating on campus.”
Turning free speech into a bogeyman means free speech culture is on the ropes.
Whatever you think of Musk and Twitter, supporting free speech can cost you advertisers, partnerships — even your job
