Thread by @DarrenJBeattie

(1/n)

I would like to add some thoughts to @jeffgiesea's superb thread on censorship/deplatforming.

If you haven't yet read it, check the link below:

https://twitter.com/jeffgiesea/status/1100755834567606272

2/n In the thread, Jeff identifies different forms of censorship (broadly understood) associated with different kinds of services.

e.g. deplatformed by Amazon (retail), or PayPal/bank (financial services) , banned/shadowbanned from twitter, disparate impact algorithms etc

3/n In order to effectively address the full range of censorship possibilities in this taxonomy, I would suggest two fundamentally different (thought complementary) conceptual approaches.

One is an identity politics approach and the other is structure of gov't approach.

4/n The first could deal with the censorship issue by treating one's political affiliation--or more aptly put political orientation--as part of ones' identity that could enjoy protected class status the same way that gender, race, and sexual orientation are currently categorized

5/n This "political orientation as protected class" could help to protect against some of the most Orwellian possibilities of being closed out of the economy because of one's political beliefs.

One couldn't be denied service by a restaurant, a bank, UBER.

6/n This protected class approach like an especially appropriate avenue to explore given the recent political hate crimes against Trump supporters--Covington, Smollett, and countless others.

7/n Indeed, would it really be shocking to learn that one is far more likely to experience genuine discrimination for one's political identity (if one is pro-Trump) than if one belongs to a. current protected class?

8/n The second approach to the censorship problem focuses not on the individual harm experienced by a member of a persecuted political identity--rather, the second approach focuses on the much broader harm of censorship to the integrity and viability of the democratic process.

9/n It is useful to read a seminal 1971 law review article by the late, great Judge Robert Bork, "Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems."

Full disclosure (brag): I had the tremendous privilege of working for Judge Bork for two years.

Now, in this piece, Bork identifies POLITICAL SPEECH as the beating heart of the speech protections that the first amendment would confer. All other forms of speech extraneous and not protected in principle. This got him in trouble because it meant pornography, etc not protected

Free Political speech, Bork continues, is SO CENTRAL to the very notion of representative democratic government that it would have to be inferred even if there were no explicit protection of speech in 1st amend.

If freedom of POLITICAL speech is an indispensable component of a representative democratic system of gov't such as ours (I'm being generous), it would seem that @jeffgiesea's emphasis on market share should enjoy much more importance than the common state vs private sector frame

Indeed, media platforms such as facebook, twitter etc. are considered sufficiently integral to our democratic deliberative process that meddling by foreign actors, however negligible, is hyped up as "hacking democracy”

Yet what this acknowledges---namely, that the biggest tech platforms are indeed integral to precisely the kind of POLITICAL free speech whose protection in practice animates the core purpose of the first amendment.

So to conclude---two approaches to develop in response to censorship

1) protected class status for political orientation---to protect individuals

2) recognizing that freedom of political speech IN PRACTICE is indispensable to structure of representative democracy.

Understanding 2) in the proper way will make one far more attentive to the first amendment implications of de facto harm to practice of political speech, and less focused on whether the harm is done by "private company" or govt.