Suppressing opinion, good for democracy?
21st April 2022
Elon Musk has caused quite a stir recently with his bid to buy Twitter. He has a huge following on the platform and recently posted a poll asking his followers if they thought that Twitter adhered to the principle of free speech, more than 70% of people who voted said no.
https://tinyurl.com/musktwitterpoll
Since then he has increased his stake as a shareholder of Twitter and launched an audacious bid to buy Twitter outright and transform it into a free speech platform.
Musk has had one bid of $54.20 per share rejected but it looks like he is preparing to make another bid soon and has partnered with Morgan Stanley to raise more capital for a better offer possibly as soon as next week.
You can read more about this here.
https://tinyurl.com/musktwitterbid
Twitter has de-platformed many people including of course the former president of the US, Donald Trump and many people who questioned the safety of the covid vaccines or the origin of the virus.
This they say is in order to protect us from 'misinformation' and 'fake news' the question is though is this policy effective and are many Twitter users now self censoring, being careful about what they say for fear of becoming de-platformed themselves?
Elon Musk himself has said many contraversial things on Twitter, but if he owned the platform himself he would not be at risk of being deplatformed.
In my view allowing people to have a rigourous debate is better than trying to suppress free speech.
Suppressing contraversial opinion does not solve anything, the issues are still there and if anything, removing content which is deemed to be 'fake news' or 'misnformation' can lead to more suspicion, because people think to themselves, 'what are they trying to hide' maybe it was removed not because it was 'misinformation' but because it was too close to the truth and didn't follow the current narrative?
Democracy is all about freedom of speech and differences of opinion, even if we don't agree with someones opinion we should let people have a voice and express themselves freely, we may then challenge them, point out the flaws in their argument and so on, not just suppress these views and pretend that they don't exist.
Historically, the demand for free speech has been at the heart of the fight for social justice. Social justice and free speech go hand in hand.
Censorship is in fact a weapon wielded by the powerful to suppress social change and reform.
Look at how information is suppressed in authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China for example.
We need to have freedom of speech to be a true democracy.
Harry S. Truman, the 33rd President of the United States stated the following in a special address to congress regarding internal security on 8th August 1950.
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."
Western governments are working hand in glove with big tech and social media to oppress us and control the narrative.
Will Elon Musk be able to shake things up and give us a platform where we can freely question things without fear of being deplatformed.
For sure many people will try to make things difficult for him, but we will soon see how all this will play out.
Musk is an unconventional businessman, contraversial as well, no doubt that he is a genius though, I wonder if he might just get his way.
Article is my own.
Pictures: Screenshot from Twitter and Courtesy of Pixabay.
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