Yesterday I mentioned that Democratic Vice Presidential candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz claimed, “There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech and especially around our democracy.” I pointed out that this was simply wrong, and that the First Amendment protects both misinformation and hate speech.
It’s very different in Britain, which allows the police to arrest people for language considered “extreme.” And indeed the government just arrested three people for what they wrote on social media platforms, and it could arrest many more in the coming weeks.
You might not care about this because you don’t live in Britain, or you think social media should not allow the incitement of violence. After all, the ostensible reason for a recent riot was hate speech and misinformation on X.
But we have seen European, Australian, Canadian, and Brazilian governments all demand global censorship of social media platforms, and all of the social media platforms except for Elon Musk’s X have gone along with their demands.
What makes all of this additionally alarming is that we have repeatedly seen military and intelligence agencies, including those from the United States, Britain, and Canada, coordinate their monitoring of social media and sharing of information.
And we have seen Google and Facebook repeatedly cave in. Under pressure from the Biden Administration, Facebook censored true stories of Covid vaccine side effects in 2021 simply because it feared the White House might not help Facebook negotiate with the EU over the retrieval of valuable user data from Europe.
And now, Britain’s top government prosecutor said he would work with foreign countries to extradite people to Britain for trial. Just listen to Stephen Parkinson, the UK’s Director of Public Prosecutions.
