While the famous Pentagon Papers case, New York Times Co v United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), is more famously associated with the Times, The Washington Post was heavily involved as well. The petitioners argued that the government trying to prohibit “publication of current news of vital importance to the people of this country” was wholly wrong and a violation of the First Amendment, a position with which the Supreme Court agreed.
But now it seems that the very same Washington Post doesn’t like it when another privately owned company might choose to publish things with which the Post disagrees:
Tesla CEO has used platform in ugly ways. Now he gets to shape the company’s policies.
By Ellen K. Pao
It takes a lot of money to become a board member of Twitter, but not a lot else apparently. With a large stock purchase, an abuser of the service — Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and the world’s richest man — has now essentially bought himself a warm welcome from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. For those of us who care about equity and accountability, Musk’s appointment to such a prominent role at a platform that serves hundreds of millions of users daily is highly disconcerting — a slap in the face, even.
Musk has been open about his preference that Twitter do less to restrict speech that many see as hateful, abusive or dangerous. Given his new influence, the way he himself has used the platform bodes ill for its future. Musk paid $20 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and stepped down as Tesla’s chairman, after tweeting what the SEC said was misleading information about a potential transaction to take the company private; the settlement also required that any Musk tweets about the company’s finance be reviewed by lawyers. (He continues to flout SEC rules, failing to notify the agency immediately last month when he passed the threshold of owning 5 percent of Twitter’s shares. The 11-day delay in that declaration may have netted him $156 million, experts say — since shares shot up after investors learned of his purchases.)
On nonfinancial subjects, Musk, who has nearly 81 million followers, often punches down in his tweets, displaying very little empathy. He called a British caver who helped to rescue trapped young Thai divers “a pedo guy” (beating a defamation suit over the slur but adding to his reputation as a bully). In February, he tweeted, then deleted, a meme comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.
Let’s be truthful here: a lot of Twitter users compared Mr Trudeau to der Führer! The Prime Minister’s use of arbitrary and dictatorial orders to fight COVID-19 and to stifle protest aren’t exactly the actions one would normally attribute to a free and democratic government.
Perhaps not coincidentally, allegations of incidents involving racism and sexism at Tesla have been common — standing out even by tech-world’s low standards. A female engineer who sued Tesla, claiming “unwanted and pervasive harassment,” reported that one area in a Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., was known to women as the “predator zone.” Black workers have claimed that White workers at that same factory referred to another area as “the plantation.” Like many trolls, Musk says his critics — both those on Twitter and those who sue him — should be more “thick-skinned.” He used that phrase in message to factory workers, some of whom had raised concerns about racial harassment.
After a couple more paragraphs in which the author tells us what a scumbag Mr Musk is – and I am not a fan of Mr Musk myself – we get to this:
Musk calls himself a “free-speech absolutist,” but like many “free speech” advocates, he willfully ignores that private companies are free to establish some limits on their platforms. He hasn’t learned from the folks who left Facebook and subsequently raised alarms about the harms the platform can cause teenage girls and other users. Or even from Dick Costolo or Evan Williams, former CEOs of Twitter, both of whom eventually realized how pervasive and harmful online harassment is. (“I wish I could turn back the clock and go back to 2010 and stop abuse on the platform by creating a very specific bar for how to behave on the platform,” Costolo said in 2017.) Co-founder Williams even went on to build a new company for sharing information, Medium, because he regretted the way Twitter, Facebook and other platforms had turned into free-fire zones. Lots of tech leaders — though not Musk — are turning against “free speech” models that end up letting the loudest, most extreme and hateful voices win, driving others off the platforms.
No one sees everything on Twitter; people see the tweets of those they follow, or tweets to which one of their followers responds or likes or retweets. But it’s simple: if Miss Pao thinks that “the loudest, most extreme and hateful voices win, (and are) driving others off the platforms,” then Twitter might lose users and the company lose value; Mr Musk has bet against that, and it is his money!
Of course, Twitter has, itself, driven off users, through its censorship of conservative views.
The Post itself did not say what Miss Pao wrote; the editors simply provided space for her to express her view independently. But one has to wonder: just how closely do the views of the editors of the Post adhere to Miss Pao’s opinion?
The New York Times, that paragon of freedom of speech and of the press, published OpEds celebrating Twitter’s banning of “misgendering” and “deadnaming” of transgender individuals, and even an OpEd entitled “Free Speech Is Killing Us. ”
The revolution which began with Rush Limbaugh and continued with the internet, and the ability of anyone to express his views more widely, ended the gatekeeping functions of the editors, and that’s something they just cannot stand. Now, anyone can say anything, without an editor to censor him. Twitter is, of course, the largest self publishing medium in the world, and now we have a part owner and board member who wants to issue less editorial restraint on users, and the credentialed media really, really, really don’t like that. Heaven forfend! Donald Trump might be allowed back on Twitter!
Musk’s appointment to Twitter’s board shows that we need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication. For starters, we need consistent definitions of harassment and of content that violates personal privacy. Most companies, I suspect, would welcome such regulations: They would give executives cover to do things they know should be done but which they are afraid to try, out of fear of political backlash or a revolt by some users. If platforms continue to push for growth at all costs — without such regulations — people will continue to be harmed. The people harmed will disproportionately be those who have been harmed for centuries — women and members of marginalized racial and ethnic groups. The people who benefit from unrestricted amplification of their views will also be the same people who have benefited from that privilege for centuries.
Freedom of speech and of the press is harmful, Miss Pao has just said. That she used her freedom of speech, and the Post’s freedom of the press to disseminate her view on the subject seems not to have occurred to her, or, if it did, she thought that what she said ought to be acceptable, and not deserving of censorship, or criticism.
Miss Pao, a child of privilege — her mother a researcher, her father a math professor, who was able to matriculate at Princeton, and, following that, go straight to Harvard Law School — is very, very concerned about “women and members of marginalized racial and ethnic groups,” sued — and lost! — a sex discrimination lawsuit against her former employer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, yet, in an article attacking “incels,” or the “involuntarily celibate,” The Perverse Incentives That Help Incels Thrive in Tech, which she has linked on the main page of her website, she wrote, “We cannot allow employees to mobilize identity-based intolerance, much less against their own coworkers,” and yet she just attacked “the same people who have benefited from that privilege for centuries,” certainly identity-based intolerance on her part.
I get it: Miss Pao, specifically, and much of the left in general, do not like freedom of speech and freedom of the press when people of whom they do not approve use their First Amendment rights to express views to which the left are opposed.
