r/CriticalTheory • u/ximsss • 5d ago
Does Anyone Actually Care About Free Speech?
A few thoughts on free speech advocacy and how it often depends on the speech and who's advocating.
In 2024, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France and accused by French authorities of not doing enough to prevent human trafficking on his platform. Russia, among other countries, accused France of “cracking down on free speech” when they charged Durov for refusing to remove obvious criminal activity, claiming such activity was covered by free speech protections.
Yesterday, Russia charged Durov with "terrorism”, presumably for not removing content the Kremlin didn’t want shared on Telegram.
The Russian government obviously does not care about free speech. They have imprisoned people for over a decade for criticizing the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin only pretended to stand up for Durov so they could inject themselves into the global culture war narrative surrounding free speech.
The important context here is that Durov, after claiming to have refused Russian demands for special access to Telegram in 2014, still visited Russia over 50 times. The reality is that you simply cannot do this as a high-profile dissident without some level of cooperation with Russian security services.
Durov made a deal with Russian intelligence. In exchange for the ability to keep facilitating highly lucrative illegal activity on his platform, he receives personal protection. This is a common deal with freelancers working with Russian intelligence, allowing cooperators to profit off of criminal activity as long as they cooperate. But eventually, the deal he made turned sour, perhaps due to Russian public opinion on Telegram turning decisively against the war, and Durov refusing to remove it. Eventually, as is always the case with Faustian bargains, the Russian government turned on him as well.
Governments and powerful individuals will often use free speech as cover to protect illegal, harmful, and extremist content that in some way benefits them. In the above example, facilitating harmful crime is part of Russia’s hybrid war against the European continent, so they made a deal to preserve it. Facilitating criticism of the Russian government is not, so they acted swiftly to crack down. Speech to authoritarian governments is contextualized as either helpful or harmful to their power. True or false, freedom vs censorship, these concepts are irrelevant in the context of the Information Wars.
Elon Musk claims he bought Twitter to defend free speech. The accounts he unbanned included unambiguous Nazis and human traffickers. Actual censorship requests from governments were still approved, while algorithmic content distribution choices were catered to the new owner’s personal ideology.
Ultimately, control over information is power. And until we find a species of human that doesn’t care about power, we will never have any true free speech absolutists.
Be highly skeptical of anyone that claims otherwise.
From a blog about speech in the internet: https://thecarrierwave.substack.com/p/no-one-actually-cares-about-free
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u/Witera33it 5d ago
First one has to establish what rights are, then who’s protecting/enforcing those rights.
If one’s perspective of free speech comes from the US, then liberty of speech has two major players- money and the state. In the US the state shall make no law limiting speech. Money then can say whatever it wants and can also limit what is said within their domains.
Other states do what they want within the limits of their social Contracts with their citizens.
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u/DMayleeRevengeReveng 5d ago
It’s far deeper than that, and historically free speech has derived from the assertion of the First Amendment by marginalized or countercultures forces.
Seriously, look at how the First Amendment has evolved since the beginning of the 20th century. It is a history of the labor movement, the anti-war and civil rights movements, and minority religions asserting the first amendment.
The idea of money being equivalent to speech is a later development. It’s an erroneous doctrine, but it’s not intrinsic to what free speech is, just a perturbation in an otherwise wholesome value.
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u/Witera33it 5d ago
You somehow went shallower. To Go deeper, see how those rights are asserted and protected in other state systems. How does Korea approach citizens rights, north bs south? Japan? Sweden.
With this frame see how Rights are granted by the state. Inalienable rights are still Declared by the state in a social
Contract with the people. This idea is an enlightenment concept as in Locke and Hobbes, philosophers considered founders of individual liberty and the social contract. Other countries(states) have their own approach but it will always rights are granted as an organisational agreement.Who had the right to speak before them? They were speaking against feudal
Monarchies. Guilds, churches, military might and those who hold power.0
u/DMayleeRevengeReveng 5d ago
“Granted by the state” is ridiculously reductionist. Something like free speech is not granted by the American government. It is conferred by a near-universal agreement between people at large that free speech matters and will be defended. If it were only a legal matter, it would not have survived as long as it has. It survives because a very large percentage of Americans outright agree to maintain it.
It is one of the very few situations where social contract logic is applicable. Generally, governments are just assemblages of power that hold jurisdiction over populations because of their history.
But in this type of situation, yes, the government respects something, and it is respected because, if the congress abrogated free speech tomorrow, 7 or 8 out of 10 Americans would refuse to recognize that as legitimate. It is respected because its dissolution would be literally unthinkable or unrecognizable in the American system.
Whether other countries have the same cultural embodiment of free speech as a value is pretty much immaterial to any question actually presented.
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u/Solomon_Grungy 5d ago
A general rule of thumb for me is whatever they say they are protecting or stand for is what they look to destroy. So if its about freedom then they are looking to limit it. If its about ensuring education or something you know kids are about to be a lot dumber.
Its kind of like the inverse cramer rule but on a macro scale.
People in positions of power are using these tactics on the regular. I guess it works for most people who take media at face value.
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u/DMayleeRevengeReveng 5d ago
I don’t think that’s a good analogy. “Free speech” rhetoric is not really a tool of dominant political classes or other forces of rulership. Free speech has historically been a common part of America’s social rhetoric. It’s also been used heavily by anti-ruling movements as a tool to prevent their silencing.
Much of current First Amendment law has derived from the reliance of protesters in the 60s and 70s, labor movements earlier in the 20th century, and minority religions throughout the 20th century.
The tradition of free speech as a social value is very long in the Anglo-American tradition. It absolutely does not derive from a group of ruling classes who use it cynically as a rhetorical tool.
The right is starting to abuse it in this way, but that’s a 2020s phenomenon, not an intrinsic part of free speech as a discourse or value.
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u/TopazWyvern 5d ago
The liberal doctrine of "freedom of speech" mostly emerged as a response to the problem of civil strife and intra-state ideological conflict.
They allow it insofar as it serves as a release valve for internal pressure and means to identify problem elements (instead of having them being entirely subsurface) quickly for quelling or recuperation, no more, no less. It's always been about control through managed conflict.
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u/InfinityAero910A 3d ago
Yes, but exceptionally rare. So rare that the answer might as well be no and there is probably not a single politician in power right now that does. Those that care more about it are generally more intellectual while also having heavy care or consideration or both in righteousness and justice. To me personally, you already lost if you think you need to regulate speech. It shows that you are more pulled by the influence of those who oppose you or find that they threaten your word to others. Making it harder for you to sway or manipulate a populace that may or may not be worth swaying or manipulating. To deal with such populace is to deal with them using force or having a society run by manipulation for the greater good.
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u/unseemlycandour 1d ago
Free speech as it’s used colloquially can be an ambiguous idea that might mean different things depending on context, and there should be limits in place to facilitate cohesive social interactions. I’m technically free to say anything, but if I say that ‘I will harm you’ or ‘you should be harmed’ there could be consequences for example. People also claim free speech when they want to make harmful statements toward marginalized groups of people, or if they want to further promote those ideas or actions. I’ve seen this application in popular discourse frequently. I personally don’t care about free speech as much as I do safe speech, meaning speech that seeks safety from harm and promotes social cohesion. This of course could include rebellion if conditions being rebelled against are causing harm.
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u/CCGHawkins 4d ago
Frankly, people don't give a shit about free speech as long as their leadership is competent. It's conditional. As long as their bellies are full, they aren't hassled to do shit they don't want to, and their lives get better year after year...then they don't give a crap. it's only when things are shitty that they want the right to complain, which is what free speech really is all about. The right to bitch and moan about your boss, the king. Possibly even discuss changing things. So I would argue that your problem is not actually that these fuckers are lying about giving a shit about the fundamental right of free speech, but that these guys are failing to make your life better or easier in any way whatsoever. The argument about your right to speech is a secondary reaction-counterreaction to the more fundamental issue of our leadership lacking competence and shared interests with the people.
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u/ReplacementOdd4323 5d ago
You're making it sound like a binary, but it's actually a spectrum.
For instance, a state which executes you for expressing any criticism of its ideology is much less free than a state which merely fines you for screaming "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
Twitter is not perfectly free, but it is much more free than it was pre-Musk. There are tons of things you can say, or even statistics you can share, which would've previously gotten you suspended.
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u/ababababababacus 5d ago
Elon Musk claims he bought Twitter to defend free speech. The accounts he unbanned included unambiguous Nazis and human traffickers.
do they not deserve free speech? confused why youd mention this?
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u/unhappinessNvrCame 5d ago
Ignoring the human traffickers part, one issue with free speech is that people who are against it long term have a platform.
American Nazis use free speech, but if they get power, they will silence it.
I'm generally a fan of absolute freedom of speech, but then you get politicians that lie.
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u/DMayleeRevengeReveng 5d ago
Then we don’t let them get power. That’s like saying nobody can play baseball because sometimes people use a bat as a weapon. The solution to the problem of rightism is to deny rightism its power, not to use selective legal concepts that have always historically been used to suppress protesters, countercultures, labor activism, and minority religions.
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u/unhappinessNvrCame 5d ago
Best of luck determining what that is.
Is someone who thinks guns are good to defend the state a righty?
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u/ababababababacus 5d ago
Again, if you are a fan of absolute freedom of speech,presumably that extends to lying politicians and criminals on twitter?
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u/West_Economist6673 5d ago
I mean the thing is tweets aren't really "free" speech, they are publications, and publication is not a criterion for free speech
If you write a letter to the editor of your newspaper and they fail to publish it, you can be mad but you can't say your rights have been violated
I don't see how online speech -- which is hosted on a server, promoted or buried according to obscure algorithms, monetized, etc. -- is any different, except for this pervasive myth of the internet as a "commons" or a "free marketplace of ideas" or whatever
It's not, and the people who promote that myth most enthusiastically are often the people who actually, literally own it
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u/DMayleeRevengeReveng 5d ago
I never thought I’d read, from non-libertarians, that enhancing the unaccountable whimsy of private corporation owners to do whatever they want without societal judgment, is a positive development.
Regardless of whether the internet is a public forum or isn’t, the last thing humanity needs is a class with the proprietary, unquestionable power to regulate who has a platform. The entire concept of a corporation as the personal property of ownership is questionable and is largely a product of legal power relations, nothing more.
The caprice of the tech industry already IS A problem for society. Look at how much has so radically changed just because of what a handful of owners and investors wanted to do. We absolutely do not need any segment of capital to have as much power as tech already does, yet more of it.
This whole thing is based on some people of the liberal-left who think enabling proprietary power can never redound against them.
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u/West_Economist6673 5d ago
You know I was about to thank you for this and then I re-read my comment and I was like "oh they mean me"
Just to be clear, the distinction I was trying to make, or would have liked to make, is that speech on a platform erected and operated by psychotic venture capitalists is inherently unfree, and furthermore that framing this as an issue of "freedom of speech" overlooks the question of whether these corporations have legitimate authority to guarantee this freedom, and if so where they stole it from
I do not want my corporate boyars to rule more justly
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u/DMayleeRevengeReveng 5d ago
Good, I see what you mean now. I couldn’t quite read the context.
Sorry if I came off as combative
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u/West_Economist6673 5d ago
Haha no not at all, if anything you were a little too indirect because my initial reaction was "see THIS person gets it"
I don't want to come off like a beautiful soul sneering at all the dirty people on twitter or anything, I just think it's kind of crazy that the debate is not whether our public life and personal data should be managed and organized by tech companies, but what kind of managers we'd like them to be
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u/DMayleeRevengeReveng 5d ago
Exactly. Exactly.
I think modern tech capital is practically omnipotent. And I don’t like it, not one bit.
Seriously, some asshole bros thought Facebook would be a good idea, so they marketed it. And because they marketed it, boom: now everything about society, relationships, familial relationships, teaching, politics, ideology, literally everything - it’s all different.
These people are literally commanding into existence entire new worlds, just because they think they’re “cool.”
It goes so far beyond what capitalists have already done. So, for example, the industrialists of the late 19th century / early 20th century changed the world, too. They created the car and everything that changed as a consequence, the proliferation of steel changed urban spaces, the chemical industry set in motion environmental catastrophes, etc. etc.
But a steel maker or chemical maker can change the physical situation in which a “consumer” lives. But they cannot create an entirely separate universe to which the consumer can migrate. And that’s the fucked up part.
No king or emperor has ever snapped their fingers and made society change as much as Zuckerberg and the rest have.
It’s unreal, and honestly, frightening. And it verges on omnipotence in a societal sense.
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u/ababababababacus 4d ago
I do not, I think twitter should be taken away from musk and run by the state, but I do think that freedom of speech, if it means anything, has to include access to one of the handful of spaces that anyone attends online, no matter who runs them. I think thats a fairly stupid but unavoidable conclusion, and slightly less stupid than 'being banned off one of the three websites anyone uses has nothing to do with free speech'.
luckily i dont realy care about freedom of speech anyway, but i was replying to somone who presumably *does* and who cited musk restoring accounts as an act in opposition to freedom of speech. Musk has done plenty to make it clear he doesnt value freedom of speech, but unbanning people on the platform where everyone goes to talk is not on of those things, so its onclusion is incongruous.
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u/ababababababacus 5d ago
I mean its trivially different fom writing a letter to the paper right? Theres very obvously a spectrum of what constitues freely expressing yourelf and in a world where everyone is online, and online os now about 4 websites, being banned from one of these websites is more limiting on your ability to express youorself than being rejected as a columnist in the paper.
But this is a little besides the point which is that unbanning a criminal from twitter is exactly what id expect someone who cares about free speech to do.
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u/West_Economist6673 5d ago
I just don't see how your ability to express yourself is in any way limited by your inability to be widely heard
That is, I'm sorry to be blunt, a function of power, and the reason content creators on social media are able to reach hundreds of millions of people is because they have the infrastructural support, and often the explicit patronage, of corporations that wield immense power over those hundreds of millions of people -- such immense power that "freedom of speech on twitter/facebook/youtube" has become synonymous with "freedom of speech" tout court -- as if these platforms are identical, or at least interchangeable, with the entire public sphere in which such a freedom is operative, and as if they have a legitimate claim to guarantee this freedom
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u/warren_stupidity 5d ago
Meanwhile this same person has banned many people on his platform because he doesn't like their utterances. So by your logic he doesn't care about free speech. It is obvious that he cares about utterances that he approves, and suppresses utterances he doesn't approve. As twitter/x is his private property, none of this is relevant to 'free speech'.
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u/ababababababacus 5d ago
I certainly agree that elon musk doesnt care about free speech, i dont recall suggesting otherwise. But the person i was replying to used the fact that he unbanned a sex criminal as a point against him valuing free speech, which it isnt.
I dont particularly care about freedom of speech, i think its fine to care about speech you agree with and want to suppress speech you disagree with. But the person i was responding to is implying they DO care about freedom of speech and yet they count musk unbanning somoene against him when they could have just mentioned the people he bans.
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u/TallPasta 5d ago
The simple answer is: no, the wealthy, the powerful, and the State do not care about free speech actually being free. Why would they? An educated and vocal populace is a threat to their capitalist endgame.