ST. LOUIS — Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) joined a chorus of conservative voices celebrating Elon Musk’s vow to remake Twitter into a social media platform that amplifies free speech.
“Elon Musk's stated commitment to free speech is outstanding, and I hope he's serious about it,” Hawley said in an interview with 5 On Your Side. “I hope [Musk] follows through on it. I hope that he turns Twitter into a true free speech platform. And I think a great way to start would be to open the books on Twitter. Let's see who Twitter has been shadow banning. Let's see who they have been censoring. Let's see who drove the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story a couple of years ago, for instance. I think that'd be a great way to show full transparency and a commitment to free speech.”
In the heat of the 2020 presidential election, moderators at Twitter temporarily suspended the New York Post’s account, citing concerns over the origin and authenticity of documents published in a story about Hunter Biden’s emails. Investigations and forensic analysis of the laptop later revealed the documents were legitimate, though that was less clear at the outset, and not immediately obvious in the original reporting. Skeptics raised concerns that perhaps the emails had been hacked or stolen.
In hindsight, Musk called Twitter’s decision “incredibly inappropriate.”
“The rationale at the time was they were fake,” Hawley echoed. “We were told that this was Russian disinformation. You had the former CIA director saying this was Russian disinformation, all false. So I would say that when you have a legitimate news outlet like the New York Post publishing a legitimate news story, to censor it with no evidence, saying that it's Russian disinformation when there's no evidence to that, that's pretty egregious. I would hope everybody could agree that shouldn't happen. And I think Musk is right to call it out.”
The New York Post story, and Musk’s takeover of Twitter, both raise another compelling question about the right to anonymously publish information, regardless of its authenticity.
Musk has promised to “authenticate every human” in an effort to “defeat the spam bots” in a push to purge Twitter of anonymous sock puppet accounts that often flood the site with misinformation or annoying content. However, American courts have consistently ruled Americans have a right to publish things anonymously. Could Musk’s broader goals run into other constitutional questions? Do Americans have a fundamental right to publish anonymously? Do those rights extend to automated bots?
“Well, that's a good question,” Hawley, a constitutional lawyer, said. “There is a right to publish, and perhaps anonymously. I'm not sure if it would extend necessarily to publishing in this way. I mean, using these particular profiles and on this platform and the way that they're doing it, so maybe that'll be litigated.”
Musk, who Forbes lists as the richest person in the world, joins an elite group of the world’s wealthiest people who own a massive publishing platform.
Jeff Bezos, the second richest person in the world, noted on Twitter that Musk and his electric vehicle company Tesla both have a vast interest in the rare-earth mineral resources and the customer base in China.
Bezos asked, “Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?”
“I thought that was a clever question, although I'm not sure Jeff Bezos is exactly the right person to be delivering that message considering what he sells on his platform and who has a great deal of control over Amazon in terms of the number of products sold, and the supply chains that feed Amazon,” Hawley responded.
“Bezos is a monopolist and obviously someone who's wanted to control media companies,” he said. “He owns the Washington Post, not an organization notably dedicated to free speech, in my judgment. So I would say that he probably feels a little threatened, it seems, by the commitment to free speech that Elon Musk says he has. But let's see. I mean, let's see what Musk chooses to do with Twitter. I think the early signs are encouraging. But he doesn't have control of it yet. The deal hasn't closed, the sale hasn't happened. So let's see what happens when he is fully in control.”
In a Tuesday letter to Musk, Hawley claimed that Twitter had “intervened in American discourse with an increasingly heavy hand, attempting to shape the information environment for overtly partisan reasons.”
Moderators at the social media giant have claimed they sought to curb dangerous misinformation during the pandemic or in the aftermath of a political uprising that threatened a safe transfer of power.
Hawley asked, "Do Twitter's shadow banning and suspension patterns evince a consistent political bias?”
But what if one political party, at any given time in history, chooses to lie at a greater volume than the other? Shouldn't bias hinge on an axis of facts and not on the ever-changing opinions and honesty of politicians or a political party?
“Well, it depends on if you are committed to the First Amendment or not,” Hawley said. “If you believe in the First Amendment, then you believe in free speech and you believe that speech that you disagree with shouldn't be automatically labeled misinformation and banned. That's not what most social media -- folks in charge of social media -- currently believe. They think that they should be able to control speech. They think -- and most liberals today, unfortunately, seem to think -- that if they disagree with you, they ought to be able to shut you down. That's even if you are saying something satirical, like the Babylon Bee, for instance, which is made fun of Joe Biden and is currently banned on Twitter. Why? Because what they're saying was a lie? No, because Twitter didn't like their speech.
“The First Amendment says that speech is protected so long as it isn't violent, it doesn't incite violence or directly encourage a crime. I think that's a pretty good principle to use for these social media platforms and I hope that Musk will use it.”