What Should Twitter Forbid? Be Specific.

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Every Friday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Question of the Week

Elon Musk bought Twitter. Anticipating that the deal will go through, many are advising him on how to improve the platform, with a focus on the tension between free speech and content moderation. Musk called free speech “the bedrock of a functioning democracy” and signaled his intention to make Twitter a platform that constrains it less often than it does now, later clarifying that “by ‘free speech,’ I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”

Of course, Twitter is not bound by the First Amendment, but it could voluntarily adopt First Amendment standards, declaring that if the government would be legally unable to censor a given tweet, then Twitter will treat that tweet as safe from its corporate censors as a matter of policy.

Here’s Marc Andreessen articulating a case for that approach:

We have 231 years of jurisprudence and case law, hard fought and hard argued by many of the best minds in our history, for both free speech and exceptions to free speech. It is hard to believe the crazed activism of our time can lead to superior conclusions.

Alternatively, Twitter could adopt or retain stricter content-moderation policies with respect to contested categories like harassment, hate speech, misinformation, disinformation, pornography, and more. Some this is needed to protect vulnerable users or “to save democracy.”