IntroductionJ. R. Shackleton
The twenty-first century offers people more opportunities than ever before in history to communicate ideas and opinions. Thirty or forty years ago a relative handful of privileged individuals â senior politicians, trade union leaders, television personalities, published authors and columnists â had a regular national or international platform via television or newspapers. A rather larger number had access to pulpits, lecture theatres, public meetings or hustings. The bulk of the population, though, was largely confined to talking to relatives, friends and neighbours. The more determined might write letters to newspapers or their political representatives. Some particularly committed individuals might collect signatures for a petition, or organise a demonstration. Others, though, lapsed into apathy â or worse, despairing of their lack of influence or voice, might resort to violence and terrorism.
Today, however, technological developments allow us all to make our views known via social media, online comments pages, blogs and YouTube. An ordinary person â for example, the late Captain (then Sir) Tom Moore â can rise from obscurity to mass acclaim in days. Others can set up their own websites and lucratively promote ideas and their own personalities as bloggers or influencers. Politicians and fundraisers can send personalised messages to millions of individuals in nanoseconds. Individuals can research issues online in greater depth and with far less effort than previous generations could ever have dreamt of. And we can take part in real-time discussions about these issues with people anywhere in the world via apps such as Zoom.
Generations have fought for the right for their voices to be heard, often suffering harsh penalties for their temerity in expressing such an aspiration. This surely ought to be a Golden Age for free speech, a technological triumph for democracy.
New types of speech restrictions
Yet this doesnât seem to be the case. The liberating new technologies and the freedoms associated with them have provoked a reaction which is leading to growing restrictions on speech.
Much of this, of course, comes from the state. For example, the concept of âhate crimeâ â unknown in UK law until 1998 â has expanded from its origin as an aggravating factor in mainly violent crime to a catch-all category where the potential for causing harm or offence, in real life or online, is now causing well over 100,000 hate crimes (plus the even broader category of hate âincidentsâ) to be reported each year. These numbers have been boosted by the increasing range of categories of protected individuals, and will likely be increased further by new legislation in Scotland (where the Hate Crime and Public Order Bill sets out a new crime of âstirring up hatredâ, which even includes private speech within the home) and England and Wales (where the Law Commission has consulted on proposals which include criminalising football chants).
Government restrictions on speech cover many other areas, with varying degrees of justification, from terrorism-Ârelated material to child pornography to adverts for junk food. Whatever the objections of libertarians, at least such restrictions go through a process of parliamentary debate. However, there is also increasing pressure on social media to ban content of which governments and pressure groups disapprove. Facebook, Twitter and the rest usually acquiesce as they fear that they would otherwise face new legislation.
Social media occupy an anomalous position in our society. Sold originally as a âpublic squareâ where all could meet and communicate, they avoided the restrictions placed on orthodox publishers. Yet in practice their owners have felt obliged, under pressure from politicians and public outrage, to ban certain types of written and audiovisual content. As private organisations, they have a right to do so. Yet Twitter, Facebook and YouTube exercise huge market power, and their interventions are often seen as arbitrary.
Was it reasonable for Twitter to ban then US President Donald Trump for incendiary remarks in the last days of his Presidency? Many think so, but many think not. Few may lament Facebookâs bans on holocaust denial and QAnon conspiracy theories, but quite where the line is to be drawn is unclear. There are pressures to ban climate change âdenialâ (a vague category, which might well ensnare legitimate scientific or economic concerns), while the Royal Society and the British Academy have called for social media companies to âremove harmful information and punish those who spread misinformationâ about Covid-19 vaccination. This call was taken up in January 2021 when YouTube removed TalkRadio from its platform, apparently because interviewees or callers had queried government lockdown policy.
These are controversial areas and the danger of blanket restrictions is that legitimate concerns and new evidence which runs counter to scientific consensus will be banned alongside more obviously crazy or malevolent content. It is not surprising that many now feel that social media should be regulated or even broken up if they are going to use their power in such ways.
There is a long history of restrictions forced on the media of the day â books, newspapers, the theatre, cinema, broadcasting â by government. What is very new is the downside of the democratisation of the means of communication â Twitterstorms of online invective against people or institutions who have transgressed, or are thought to have transgressed, rapidly changing social norms and mores.
It has always been the case that a degree of mutual hostility lies beneath the surface of complex societies. But technology has empowered people to express this hostility much more easily, much more rapidly, and at little cost to themselves.
Some have dismissed these eruptions of unpleasantness as transgressors âgetting what they deservedâ or abuse to be shrugged off on the principle that, though sticks and stones may break their bones, names will never hurt them. Many are particularly happy to see those who have achieved any degree of status or celebrity pulled down. But this is surely an ignoble sentiment, often based on envy. It ignores the human cost to real individuals and their families. This cost is held to be justified by trumpeting some abstract principle, or to address theoretical offence given to some abstract group or âcommunityâ. It also dismisses the future restraints which this places on the free speech of others who, although not particularly sympathetic to the individuals penalised by the online mob, may be inhibited from expressing any opinion at all for fear of giving offence to somebody.
Such inhibition may be class- and generation-based. Those who went to university and are acquainted with metropolitan thinking, or simply have fewer miles on the clock, may be able to negotiate the ever-changing rules of discourse and come out with the appropriate banalities. Others, like the unfortunate Greg Clarke, former chairman of the Football Association, are not so nimble. Clarke was forced to resign for clumsy speech such as describing footballers of colour as âcolouredâ. Or remember the Cambridge college porter and former Labour councillor Kevin Price, whose dismissal was demanded by students for refusing to support a council motion which included the words âtrans women are womenâ: how many college porters or other working-class individuals with similar doubts about transgenderism will dare to voice them in future?
Transgenderism is the hottest of hot potatoes for anybody these days, notwithstanding other credentials they may have acquired for feminist and socialist sympathies, as Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has discovered. This is an example of the way in which some protected statuses appear to override others, as black actor and committed Christian Seyi Omooba found when she was sacked from a theatre production because of anti-gay views she had tweeted six years previously â an example, incidentally, of the expanding field of âoffence archaeologyâ, where statements made years ago in a different context are disinterred to attack people today.
The obloquy which results from speaking out against the consensus is too often unmitigated by protection from our great âliberalâ institutions, such as universities, newspapers and charities, which sometimes seem only too eager to ...
