Since Elon Musk took over Twitter in October, the transition has been chaotic, to say the least, with the arrival of more public analysis and Blue Check dramas. The cultural debate about the pros and cons of the concept of lax expression on social media. Daniel Medwed, Northeast law professor and legal analyst for GBH News, joined Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel, hosts of GBH’s Morning Edition, to comment. This transcript has been modified.
Jeremy Siegel: So, let’s start with Twitter in the days of Elon Musk. It’s been forever since he picked it up, but not long ago. He made a number of questionable adjustments to the platform, some of which prompted other people. to avoid it. Tell us about the big adjustments that have taken place.
Daniel Medwed: Absolutely. Well, I’ll give it a try. So Musk, who is famous and fortunate from Tesla and SpaceX, bought Twitter in part because he claimed he was too enthusiastic to moderate content or, in his opinion, censor speech. He called Twitter the fashionable equivalent of the town square, and he wanted all voices to be heard, with the obvious exception of voices critical of his inauguration. So he bought the company and immediately got rid of many governors who modulated the content and created a freer space, I think it’s fair to say. On the one hand, it reinstated many users who had been banned for spreading hate and/or erroneous data, and added former President Donald Trump. On the other hand, it has drastically reduced the workforce from around 7,400 to around 2,700. And as a sign of those changes, it even has comfortable protocols and safeguards against the spread of false data about COVID-19Array So many changes in this very short period of time. You are right Jeremiah. I think it has only been about 3 months.
Paris Alston: Oh my God, what are the rules governing freedom of expression on a platform like Twitter, Daniel?Because we see it all the time, right? People can say destructive things all they need to and then they’re going to say, I’m just employing my flexible speech rights, those deserve to be protected through the First Amendment, not to mention other people who say they can be subject to hate. discourse.
Medwed: These are very vital questions. Some opinions on this: So, first of all, the Bill of Rights protects all our freedoms from interference from higher government. The Fourth Amendment prohibits police from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures of our assets without probable cause, without warrant. The Fifth amendment prohibits the police from forcing us to incriminate ourselves in the interrogation room. And the First Amendment protects loose speech from government intrusion. And the Supreme Court has spent centuries, literally centuries, drawing the lines of when government can regulate speech and when it can’t. . But here’s the catch: Twitter is not the government. It is not the city square. It’s just a personal platform. And as a result, the First Amendment lacks force, and the company has broad autonomy to decide whether or not to regulate speech.
Siegel: So Twitter is a personal company. Isn’t there a law that regulates the number of conversations that can take a position on the platform?
Medwed: Well, there are laws. It’s just that the First Amendment is largely unenforceable. So, for example, you can bring a personal tort action, claim defamation, if someone tweets something that is wrong and destructive to you, to your reputation, or to you in some other way. However, the consultation isn’t so much about laws and regulations as it is about what Twitter deserves or shouldn’t do. Should Twitter, as a corporate social duty or as a commercial matter, regulate discourse at the margins, at the margins?And I think some advertisers have responded. The personal marketplace responded by withdrawing their ad purchases, not as many other people had predicted, but some did.
Alston: Well, I mean, that’s an attractive way to think about it, is it rare?an explicit example of this, as there was a recent Twitter exchange between social media personality Andrew Tate and climate activist Greta Thunberg that went viral. Tell us the backstory here.
Medwed: This is what happened. It’s amazing. Notorious misogynist and provocateur Andrew Tate was banned from Twitter in 2017 for inciting hatred. But because of Elon Musk’s other protocols, he was allowed to return to the site and took the opportunity to search for Greta Thunberg, the He met the environmental activist who first rose to fame at the age of 15. As an old woman, she camped outdoors in the Swedish parliament. They have a huge collective carbon footprint. Give me your email address so I can give you more information. Thunberg responded with a perfect tweet. In response, he sent a fictitious email address that scanned a certain part of Tate’s anatomy, suggesting it was quite small.
Siegel: I saw that. And it’s like one of the most liked tweets of all time. The Twitterverse went crazy about this. People called it the biggest tweet of all time. So, free speech works both ways, obviously. Were there any legal implications for this exchange?
Medwed: You know, it’s interesting, not in terms of the discourse consistent with it, however, there were oblique ramifications. So, here’s what happened next: Tate upped the ante by presenting a reaction to Thunberg. She created a video she posted in which he continued to punish her, and in less than 24 hours, he is in Romania, in less than 24 hours, the Romanian police had arrested him on suspicion of human trafficking. And then the rumor went viral that it was necessarily his video that led the police to his door because there was a pizza box from a local chain, Jerry’s Pizza, that appeared in the video. However, Romanian police immediately denied this. They said it was already on their radar screen. But Twitterverse has gone crazy. And some of the tweets were amazing.
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WGBH News legal analyst Daniel Medwed is a professor and justice offender at Northeastern University.
Paris Alston is co-anchor of Morning Edition on GBH News.
Jeremy Siegel is co-host of Morning Edition on GBH News.
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