Is it time for free speech laws to
be changed, paving the way for new government protections for those who want to
speak their minds without losing their jobs, getting locked out of social media
sites, or banned from bookstores?
Free speech, in its ideal sense,
doesn’t really exist. People want to
believe they have a right to express their views, but they actually don’t. The free speech laws only apply to the
government. If you want to say the
president is a bum, Trump can’t jail you, but your employer could choose to
fire you. If you want to hand out leaflets
airing religious views that are controversial, you can do so without the
government locking you up but if you chose to use Facebook to share these
views, the corporate social media site can bar such comments and even kick
you off of its service.
Free speech comes with a price and
limitations in the real world. So my
question is this: Do we strengthen free
speech to extend beyond protections against government retribution, and expand
it so that corporations and others cannot directly limit your speech or punish
you as a result of such speech? Just
what would that look like?
The world would be very different
if people could truly speak their minds freely, without fear of the expression
of such views coming back to penalize them. But we really can’t speak our minds
without running into some very real problems, similar to what happens when you
speak the truth in situations where people aren’t really ready to handle it.
Does your wife really want to hear
her butt looks huge in an outfit that she likes? Does your boss really want to hear you think
he’s a moron? Does a customer at a store
really want to hear that a worker thinks she’s dumb?
We often don’t utter what’s on our
minds because it can hurt someone’s feelings or cause them to miss out on
something, but we also refrain from saying how we think or feel for fear of
ridicule, financial penalty, physical confrontation, or the loss of an opportunity
that would benefit us. So, a lot of
speech is self-censored and filtered, but should it have to be that way?
When free speech gets limited by
others, we question their authority and their ability to properly arbitrate the
sharing of words, information, ideas, and thoughts. Look at Facebook. They have the unenviable and daunting task of
creating and implementing confusing and limiting standards regarding
hate-speech. FB improperly and unevenly applies arbitrary standards to police
online postings.
The result? FB says it deletes nearly 300,000 posts each
month that it deems as hate speech. Who
determines what is hate speech and why are we quick to censor it?
FB is regulating more speech than any
government ever has and it's doing so with an ever-expanding strong arm and a
growing list of guidelines. Not that
long ago FB had a one-page policy regarding censoring content. Now it’s up to
15,000 words as the internal censorship manual expands to try to meet its
nearly two billion users.
Some people are wrongly or
unintentionally put into "Facebook Jail," where they are locked out for 24 hours or
longer. There’s no one to appeal to and
talk to about FB’s decisions and actions.
Maybe such activity needs government oversight or protection.
Free speech will challenge and even
cost us something at times, but without stronger government regulations to
support and foster real free speech, we remain a society that is only as free
and open as the few who heroically challenge the norms, the powerful, and the
people who can net us the most.
“When you sell on price, you are a
commodity. When you sell on value, you
are a resource.”
--Bob
Burg
“Start working with your prospects
as if they’ve already hired you.”
--Jill
Konrath
“The smallest of actions is always
better than the noblest of intentions.”
--Robin
Sharma
“Don’t assume a door is
closed: push on it. Don’t assume if it was closed yesterday that
it is closed today.”
--Marian
Wright Edelman
“You can’t go back and make a new
start, but you can start right now and make a brand new ending.”
--James
R. Sherman
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