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Title : Baby Parts, Slaveowners, Nazis, "Jew Haters": Let's Talk About Free Speech for a Minute
link : Baby Parts, Slaveowners, Nazis, "Jew Haters": Let's Talk About Free Speech for a Minute
Baby Parts, Slaveowners, Nazis, "Jew Haters": Let's Talk About Free Speech for a Minute
Yesterday, I heard an ad on a commercial top-40 radio station here in Juneau during rush hour that was pretty shocking in terms of its content. It was sponsored by "Life Issues for Juneau" (or a similar name) and it was, I think (?) encouraging people not to buy Cecile Richards' forthcoming memoir.
Cecile Richards is the President of Planned Parenthood, an essential provider of women's health care services here in Juneau and around the country. But the ad took sort of a meandering, lunatic turn into ad-hominem attacks on Cecile Richards herself that made no sense and had nothing to do with abortion policy at all really.
It compared Cecile Richards to a Nazi death camp guard and a slave owner. It peddled the Alex Jones-level conspiracy theory that Planned Parenthood "sells baby parts," a lie that led to a criminal indictment of the people who spread it.
Although I am unapologetically pro-choice and I think people should have access to safe and legal abortion, I have never had an abortion and I wouldn't personally be able to go through with an abortion at this point in my life.
I also think people are fully entitled to their objections--religious or otherwise--to abortion, and even to voice those objections on the radio if they want to without drawing public shock or ire.
But comparing Cecile Richards to a Nazi and a slave-owner and peddling an absolute outrageous lie that actually led to criminal charges?
Not so much.
Facebook ran into a similar issue, as reported today by ProPublica. The gist of the story can be gleaned from the first few paragraphs:
Want to market Nazi memorabilia, or recruit marchers for a far-right rally? Facebook’s self-service ad-buying platform had the right audience for you.
Until this week, when we asked Facebook about it, the world’s largest social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.'"
To test if these ad categories were real, we paid $30 to target those groups with three “promoted posts” — in which a ProPublica article or post was displayed in their news feeds. Facebook approved all three ads within 15 minutes.
After we contacted Facebook, it removed the anti-Semitic categories — which were created by an algorithm rather than by people — and said it would explore ways to fix the problem, such as limiting the number of categories available or scrutinizing them before they are displayed to buyers.
I guess this was good/bad news for me and my Jewish family?
This brings me to a point about the First Amendment. The "First Amendment" and "Free Speech" are terms that get brandished like some sort of constitutional talisman. People think they mean you can say whatever you want, wherever you want, whenever you want.
They don't.
I spend a lot of time with both the state and federal constitutions. Like I read them often. And one thing the First Amendment requires is state action, which is true of the rest of the constitution too. The constitution restricts the conduct of the government. Not, as far as I'm aware, private media corporations like KINY radio or Facebook.
This is known as the "state-action doctrine." It's con law 101.
And even the government is allowed to impose certain "time, place, and manner" restrictions on free speech. In other words, even the First Amendment has its limits.
First Amendment scholars have been studying the blurring line between the private and public spheres and its impact on the state action doctrine, an ever-shifting goalpost given our changing media climate and developing technology.
The extent to which private companies that operate in a public forum might become increasingly subject to First Amendment strictures is sort of uncharted waters as far as I can tell, and certainly the subject of a lot of academic study and discussion.
But for now, absent some sort of government nexus, the First Amendment generally doesn't apply to private entities.
It boils down to this.
Privately-owned radio stations and media companies can usually decide what ads they want to run or not run. Since corporations make the world go 'round, maybe they can do the rest of us plebes a favor and quit subjecting us to prime-time bullshit conspiracy theories and Nazi propaganda?
Like do my kids need to hear a professional woman compared to Nazi guards and slave owners? Do they need to hear bullshit lies about baby parts? Do they need that with their Katy Perry and their Taylor Swift? Do Facebook users need to be able to advertise to Nazis?
Probably not. They can probably skip all of that in good taste and in good conscience, without being reasonably criticized as "thought police" or risk descending down some slippery slope into fascist censorship.
That's really all I'm saying.
Thus Article Baby Parts, Slaveowners, Nazis, "Jew Haters": Let's Talk About Free Speech for a Minute
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