Blaming communications for unrest has a long and unhappy history. We repeat it at our peril, writes Matthew Lesh
Elon Musk, the owner of X (formally Twitter), has become a main character in British politics. The Prime Minister’s spokesperson condemned comments from Musk about the risk of a ‘civil war’ and ‘two-tier policing’. Labour MPs are threatening to leave the platform over the spread of hateful information. There have even been calls for Musk to be arrested or banned from Britain.
For some, this will appear entirely sensible. Racist and false information was spread on the platform. There were riots on the streets. Musk is a cowboy and X requires far more censorship. The state needs to get involved.
This is based on an entirely wrong idea about how a free and democratic society does and should operate. It presumes that the primary reason for the riots was violence ‘stirred up’ by right-wing politicians and other malicious figures. It treats people not as individuals, but rather, as empty vessels ready to be manipulated by dark forces.
Importantly, it fails to ask the difficult questions about the rioting. Why does a certain sort of content – a false claim about the perpetrators of the horrific attack in Southport – spread like wildfire? Why did it not matter when the ‘truth’ came out? What does it say when a gay postman goes rioting after a boozy night at the Bingo? How about burning down a hotel full of refugees?
In practice, the concepts of disinformation and misinformation are far too nebulous to be useful. This challenge arises when those in positions of authority try to label some information as right and others as wrong. In practice, our understanding changes over time and the focus of censors is inevitably arbitrary.
The pandemic was a good case study in these difficulties. Early on during 2020, the World Health Organisation declared that there was no evidence that Covid-19 was spreading between humans, according to Chinese authorities. We were told that masks were useless until they were compulsory. There were instructions to wipe down groceries, despite the virus spreading through airborne transmission. Then we have the still unsettled debate about the origin and whether it leaked out of a Chinese lab. In each of these cases the idea of right and wrong shifted. Any effort to declare a truth in advance got in the way of necessary debate.
The retort to concerns about determining truth is that sometimes we really do know that information is false. 5G masks are not making people sick, and vaccines are not bad for children. Or perhaps, there is no secret Tory plan to “privatise the NHS”, a conspiracy theory that regularly spreads on mainstream social media networks.
So what should be done then?
The first answer is that you still do not want state regulators deciding the categories of true and untrue speech. If you are a Labour voter, just think about Ofcom being directed by Tory ministers to treat information about refugees and trans kids as harmful (and vice versa).
The second answer is that censorship will not solve the underlying reason why people believe something. It just risks sending the discussion to deeper, darker parts of the internet where it will remain unchallenged.
There is nothing new in blaming communications for unrest. This phenomenon dates back at least to the printing press and reformation. The French Revolution came amid a boost in newspaper circulation. More recently, Blackberry Messenger was blamed for the 2011 riots in London.
Free speech is not absolute. It’s broadly understood that inciting violence, harassment and defamation are legitimate limitations. Community Notes, among other methods, seek to crowd-source facts that are valuable. But we should be extremely careful about expanding the categories of limited speech. It should be a concern that politicians are targeting such a major platform like X and threatening new rules against ‘legal but harmful’ content.
When you seek to censor a certain viewpoint, it is from a position of arrogance mixed in with insecurity. It’s effectively saying that not only do you know what’s right but also that expressing a certain opinion is somehow dangerous. We should feel more confident in our ability to tackle these ideas and respect people’s rights to express viewpoints.
Matthew Lesh is the director of public policy and communications at the Institute for Economic Affairs