Beyond the limit of free speech: Incitement to violence

After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.https://t.co/CBpE1I6j8Y

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 8, 2021

In an essay posted on Jan. 12, 2021, Professor Katharine Gelber, Head of the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia argued that Facebook banning the ex-president from that platform was not censorship. Instead, it amounted to blocking incitement. Her essay is entitled Incitement, not censorship: Why Donald Trump’s suspension from Twitter is not a “free speech” issue:

I have spent a good deal of my professional life examining the nature and limits of free speech, and the regulation of harmful speech. It goes without saying that I’ve been watching events unfold in the United States with a keen sense of dismay. Since his defeat in last year’s US presidential election, Donald Trump has used social media to spread rumours concerning wide-spread voter fraud, promulgate wild conspiracy theories, and inflame hostility on the part of his followers — all culminating in a speech last week, during which the President incited anti-democratic mob violence at the US Capitol.

The descent into political violence in the United States is seriously concerning. But I have also been concerned at the media coverage of the Coalition’s response in Australia to the decision by Twitter to suspend Donald Trump’s account permanently, on the grounds that it violates their content standards by inciting violence and because his use of their platform poses the “risk of further incitement of violence.”

The decision taken by Twitter to “permanently suspend” Donald Trump’s account, and by other platforms to ban any online activity from the outgoing President until Inauguration Day, is being presented as a “free speech” issue. These measures are being covered as though Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube were somehow a little too eager to kick people off their platforms, or too willing to exercise forms of censorship.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It is worth remembering that Facebook, Twitter, and Google have faced — and, indeed, for the most part resisted — calls for more than a decade to take decisive action against harmful speech on their platforms. They now have policies enabling the removal of content that violates their standards, but there is much to be done to improve the accuracy of their content removal, consistency in the application of their standards, and their ability to detect harmful speech online.

Harmful speech can take many forms. The most recent example is incitement to violence, but others include cyberstalking, doxxing, misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech. While it is appropriate that these social media companies have now taken the measures they have against Donald Trump, it is nonetheless sobering to consider that it took an eruption of mob violence against the central institution of American democracy to steel their resolve.

In other words, to reduce what has transpired over the past week to a debate over “free speech” or “censorship” is spectacularly to miss the point. The key issue is the incitement of violence — and that has received far too little attention in political commentary or media coverage. No free speech argument has ever suggested that its protections extend to the incitement of violence. There is no free speech protection for this speech, because it is evidently, immediately, and virulently harmful. (emphasis added)

One question that pops right up is what about harmful speech that is less evidently, immediately, and virulently harmful? What about decades of radical right disinformation, slanders, unwarranted fear mongering, crackpot conspiracy theory and other forms of dark free speech? All of that was a necessary prelude that paved the way for the ex-president to rise as fast and go as far as he did in damaging this country and its government and society.