Nobody Understands the First Amendment

I'm part of a Facebook group aimed at journalism school alumni, and as can be predicted, from time to time someone comes out with a statement I disagree with. My favorite was the person who used the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to say he hoped people stopped worrying about pronouns - as if gender dysphoria is a luxury that doesn't matter in the face of geopolitics.

Statements like that are stupid, but not really "hateful" per se, so I don't feel the need to report them. That changed when some other guy decided to hijack a post with a thread about someone's unrelated argument with a right-winger on Twitter. That is, someone posted something about a TV show, and this other guy responded with questions and insinuations about an unrelated matter. Content moderators understand that this is trolling, and I think most will remove this kind of content.

I duly reported the comment, both to the group admins and to Facebook (though admittedly there wasn't an option on FB to report things for hijacking a conversation). A few minutes later, I got a text from one of the admins saying they couldn't boot him because of "1A", and how it means people can say what they want.

I argued a bit, but not too strenuously, because I wanted to continue to be on friendly terms with this person. A couple days later the offender I reported came back with their own post, sharing misinformation about the 2020 election. I reported them again, both to FB and the admins, but this time didn't get a response.

What got me about my classmate's "1A" argument is that it's a complete misreading of the US's free speech protections. The most obvious is that the First Amendment applies to the government, not to Facebook groups. Indeed, it's in the preamble to the amendment: "Congress shall make no law..." (emphasis mine). That doesn't mean you can go around saying whatever you like, wherever you like; if you could, newspapers would be required to publish every letter they receive and every article they're pitched. I think we can agree that's untenable.

If you want to get really granular, I'm sure you can make an argument that the amendment as written only bars Congress from limiting the freedom of speech, whereas the President could theoretically sign an executive order making it a crime to speak negatively about the US (a normal president likely won't do this, but let's see what happens next time the Republicans take the White House). The Supreme Court can also impose limits on speech (and has) depending on how it rules on proposed curbs, for example various sedition acts passed during wartime that made it a crime to disparage the war effort or the government.

But back to Facebook. It's a bad argument on the face of it that you have to allow all posts in a group because of "1A": the group is devoted to posting for jobs, asking for contacts, and general topics of interest to J-school alumni. Grinding an axe against someone for a conversation that happened on a different platform isn't appropriate. Though I didn't object when the same guy previously raised this topic in a separate post all its own: I ignored it, as it deserved.

But more to the point, with the second post sharing election disinformation, the poster was going against Facebook's own policies. It seems silly to protect speech on a platform that said platform doesn't permit.

The free speech argument advanced primarily by Republicans is dishonest on the face of it, anyway. They claim that conservative voices are being silenced on social media, which is why they were so excited about Elon Musk's plans to buy Twitter. But they don't acknowledge that the speech being silenced is not simply racist or homophobic or xenophobic, but typically is actively inciting abuse of other people on the platform, like that Milo character from Breitbart who got banned for unleashing a bunch of right-wing trolls on Leslie Jones.

Another example is Alex Jones's lies about the Sandy Hook shooting being a false flag operation. He might claim it's his right to say that, but the Supreme Court doesn't consider that there's a constitutional value in false statements of fact. And indeed, he's been found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay damages to the parents of the victims.

So, no, "1A" doesn't mean some idiot can come to your Facebook group and spunk either election disinformation or off-topic ramblings all over it. The quicker we stop making excuses for dummies like this, the quicker they'll go away.