Why Free Speech on the Internet Isn’t Free for All

When the World Wide Web went public in 1991, its enthusiasts proclaimed a new era of unfiltered free expression. Thirty years later, the debate is over how, not whether, to filter what’s said online. In the U.S., home to the biggest social media companies, the challenge came into greater focus during the presidency of Donald Trump, who used his accounts to attack opponents while blaming social media for -- as he put it in a tweet -- “suppressing voices of conservatives and hiding information and news that is good.” In a defining moment for internet moderation, Trump himself was kicked off major platforms for things he said.

Quite free in the U.S. compared with China and Russia, which actively censor the internet, and compared with countries that apply more vigorous rules to social media, such as Germany’s ban on hate speech and new regulations in India designed to crack down on “mischievous information.” But when people talk about free speech on the internet, they generally mean something different: the degree to which social media platforms -- private companies -- moderate (or “censor,” critics say) what their users post. That’s a commercial issue governed by each company’s terms of service. There’s no First Amendment right to speak on social media, since that’s a right guaranteed against government censorship. In fact, courts have ruled that platforms have a First Amendment right to ban people they wish to ban.