America needs to have a discussion about this topic and set some parameters, expand FCC regulation and regulate large social media platforms like broadcasters.
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Violence at Capitol and beyond reignites debate over America's defense of extremist speech - CNN
Violence at Capitol and beyond reignites a debate over America's long-held defense of extremist speech
(CNN)With most Americans hoping this week's expected inauguration protests look nothing like the Capitol siege, questions emerge about unrestrained free expression, long championed by First Amendment theorists as a benefit to society, no matter how ugly and hateful.
The optics may be disturbing, especially so soon after the riot, with the potential of protesters -- many of like mind with those who stormed the Capitol -- screaming, or worse, at troops and police standing guard outside the razor wire-topped fences surrounding the Capitol.
Is allowing this type of expression "good" for America? An old First Amendment theory -- known as the safety valve -- says it is, that permitting groups to express themselves releases pressure, ensuring objectionable ideas aren't driven underground where they might boil over into violence.
Permitting free speech, including hate and extremist speech, is often cast as a universal boon, reinforced in idioms such as, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant" and "I don't agree with what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it."
Not all First Amendment scholars are buying the safety valve theory, especially after the deadly episode at the Capitol. They question if extremist speech demands more limitations when it's inextricably linked to the violence at the nation's legislative headquarters, after hateful online rhetoric dovetailed with politicians and activists delivering speeches to revved-up crowds that marched to the Capitol, some bent on insurrection.
Even the American Civil Liberties Union, the consummate guardian of speech, has sought to address the "competing values" its long-held defense of expression presents, and some experts say free speech theories need to take into account the way social media has been used to manipulate the marketplace of ideas.
"We have to pay attention to the way that tech platforms are shaping discourse and the way technology moves fringe ideas into the mainstream," said Joan Donovan, research director at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. "The idea we would somehow get out of it by not paying attention to what's going on and opening the floodgates to more speech misunderstands the phenomenon of online platforms and misunderstands the technology."
'Protection against ... noxious doctrine'
Ahead of President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, government and corporations are taking measures to avoid the violence that marred his Electoral College affirmation. Thousands of troops and police will be on hand, and companies including Apple, Google, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook are deplatforming and banning users, including President Donald Trump, while corporations such as PayPal and Airbnb are temporarily blocking resources, such as fundraising venues and places to stay.
Some of those targeted are crying censorship, but the First Amendment protects against government, not private organizations, stymieing expression. Big Tech and others, several scholars say, are correct to shut down extremist speech after seeing the role words on their platforms played in planning and stoking the Capitol mayhem.
The concept that would become the safety valve theory was born with US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis' 1927 concurring opinion in Whitney v. California. He posited "that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine."
Four decades later, renowned First Amendment scholar Thomas Emerson named the theory, writing that "suppression of belief, opinion and expression is an affront to the dignity of man, a negation of man's essential nature."
Robert Richards, founding director for the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment at Penn State, believes the safety valve theory has relevance in today's censorship discussions, he said, but he's not sure it's at play here, yet, given the timeframes, who's shutting down the speech and the other available avenues for expression.
Rather, he sees the corporations responding in a temporary manner to an emergency situation, "exigent circumstances that threaten to play out again," he said. Yes, shutting down speakers over time carries risks their behavior will "bubble up in some worse fashion," but there's no indication the corporate measures are permanent. They're narrowly tailored to specific speakers, apps or windows of time, he said.
"The main difference (between corporations and government shutting down speech) is the private sector can make its own rules," he said. "Going forward, those restrictions will ease up as the temperature of the country's politics goes down. ... I don't really think there's a lot of permanent ending of speech."
A far better example of the safety valve theory is the Arab Spring, Richards said. Citizens rose up across the Middle East and Africa -- to spur reform and regime change, not question a legitimate election -- but their anger reached critical mass after years of systemic oppression, he said, not a few weeks of Twitter or Airbnb bans. Americans also have alternative venues to speak out, where most Tunisians and Libyans did not
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