The sweeping directive, signed Thursday, covers a range of topics including securing federal communications networks against foreign snoops, issuing tougher sanctions for ransomware gangs, requiring software providers to develop more secure products, and using AI to boost America’s cyber defense capabilities, among others.
Look, I genuinely get what your saying, and I’m not saying people should be allowed to say whatever they want on Twitter. I’m certainly not saying the first amendment protects them. I’m just saying a lot of forms of online communication are critical in today’s society.
Like, if I got banned from Twitter for saying I dislike Elon Musk, does that sound okay? I know it’s currently legal, I’m not saying it isn’t. But it certainly feels like an unjust restriction of my speech. Not “free speech” in the protected first amendment sense, but certainly “free speech” in the sense that people should generally be allowed to say things. The response of “just build your own website and you can say what you want” is missing the point of the reach and power massive websites have. When people say “big tech restricts free speech” this is the sort of thing they’re trying to get at, but it sounds wrong because “free speech” is a pretty loaded and ambiguous term. Treating everyone saying free speech as if they mean something about the first amendment feels disingenuous to me.
And again, let me be perfectly clear, I’m not trying to insinuate that everyone should just get free reign to post whatever hateful content or misinformation they want wherever they want. I’m just saying that private companies being able to silence you on a global scale with no recourse or way to protest it feels very wrong. I don’t have a solution and don’t know where the line should be, but corporations shouldn’t just be able to gag people arbitrarily.