https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/trumps-warped-definition-free-speech/612316/
Palin’s remarks were widely ridiculed at the time. The First Amendment,
commentators on the right and the left pointed out, protects the freedom
of speech, not the freedom from criticism. You have the right to speak,
and others have the right to praise, mock, or ignore you as they see
fit.
As absurd as it may sound, Palin’s bizarre interpretation of the
First Amendment has now been adopted by the president of the United
States. On Tuesday, the social-media company Twitter added a label to
one of the president’s tweets, which falsely declared that mail-in
ballots would be “substantially fraudulent,” urging users to “get the
facts about mail-in voting.” Twitter did not ban Trump from the
platform, or censor his tweet, although it would have been fully within
its rights to do so, and in accordance with its own terms of service. It
merely appended additional context showing that the president’s claim
was false.
In retaliation, Trump signed an executive order
yesterday afternoon directing the federal government to “reconsider the
scope” of Section 230, a provision of federal law that shields
companies from liability for content posted by their users. The First
Amendment was explicitly written to protect the right of citizens to
express opposition to their leaders; it says that Congress “shall make
no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” But to the
president, criticism of his falsehoods is a violation of his free-speech
rights. This position reverses the purpose of the First Amendment,
turning an individual right of freedom of expression into the right of
the state to silence its critics.
This should be obvious, but if your freedom to speak depends on the
president approving of what you say, then you simply don’t have freedom
of speech. The Trumpist defense of state censorship of social media is
that if you do not want your kneecaps broken, then you should make sure
you pay the protection money. Twitter is hardly the first media company
to face this kind of extortion from the president; as my colleague David Graham points out, Trump has attempted to use the authority of his office to silence criticism from the Washington Post, CNN, members of the White House press corps, and even ESPN.
