Elon Musk has bought Twitter and like everyone else I am curious to see what will be happening to Twitter. I can never in the life of me wonder why a person would want to own something like twitter unless they want to manipulate the conversation. Free speech is something that the rich and powerful has always tried to manipulate but the minute you start manipulating the conversation you no long have free speech. Is that what Elon Musk is going to do? If it is, then it would probably mean the end of Twitter.
I write a blog so I take free speech very seriously, attempts to silence voices like mine has been tried throughout history. What are the two biggest groups that want to silence voices? How about the Government and the Church. What we are talking about is Free Speech, Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Expression. What we are dealing with is no censorship of our expressions and ideas, censorship of our opinions without fear of sanctions. It been establish there are a number if things that are not protected under free speech, Libel, Slander Obscenity, Pornography, Sedition, Incitement, Fighting Words, Classified Information, Copyright violations, Trade secrets, Food labeling, Non-disclosure agreements, the Right to Privacy, The right to Dignity, Public Security and Perjury. When are those being violated and what is actually supposed to be protected is a huge question? We just can’t say anything we want and say it is protected under Free Speech because it is not.
I always wrestle with when is it Perjury. Perjury is just a fancy way of saying lying. The Ten Commandments call it bearing false witness. Is it only perjury if you are under oath? If you are on the floor of Congress and you lie is that not perjury? I would like to say that a person in Congress is always under oath in my opinion. I am not saying that when a person is wrong they are lying. I am saying that when a person intentionally lies on the floor of Congress there should be consequences. Saying that Trump won the election to me is Perjury, Incitement and Sedition. All of which are not covered under free speech and there should be some type of punishment for that when they are said on the floor of Congress. When Trump mocked the disabled reporter that was not protected by free speech, he was denying that reporters right to dignity. We the electorate should be concerned when lying and attacking is being called Free Speech and Free Speech being abused to do harm as was the case of Trump mocking the disabled reporter.
I have always believed that the 1st Amendment was put there to protect us from the rich and powerful from censoring our opinions and our beliefs. I don’t think that it was put there to protect the lies and misinformation of the rich and powerful that is meant to manipulate the public. Now we cannot go around arresting everyone that lies but to use the 1st Amendment to hide behind should not be tolerated. That is what is happening today. Their lying and misinformation has cost us the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. That lying and misinformation should never be considered Free Speech. There should have been consequences for all the death but there wasn’t.
Twitter to too many of us is about Free Speech or Free Expression if you will. It was a great idea in the beginning that was used as a tool of misinformation in the 2015 general election. Our own idea of free speech was used against us and that may be changed our democracy forever. Today’s digital world is just that, the whole world. What I am writing today, when I post it will be able to be seen all across the world not just the US. All the political garbage that we are seeing do we really know where it is coming from? Our political system is now part of a world system that we don’t know enough about. Is Russian interference in our elections covered under free speech? How are we going to know what foreign country is interfering in our elections? How are you going to know when you are being manipulated by Russian misinformation? That should be the job of the social media platform I would think. It just can’t be the Wild West out there. There has to be consequences for the lying and the liars or there is no Free Speech. There has to be oversight of some kind. Is Elon Musk up to that task? Time will tell. https://cbwrong.blogspot.com/