{"id":1782805,"date":"2022-12-21T12:17:33","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T17:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1782805"},"modified":"2022-12-21T12:17:38","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T17:17:38","slug":"no-elon-musks-twitter-policies-are-not-at-odds-with-the-first-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/no-elon-musks-twitter-policies-are-not-at-odds-with-the-first-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"No, Elon Musk\u2019s Twitter Policies Are Not At Odds With The First Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fno-elon-musks-twitter-policies-are-not-at-odds-with-the-first-amendment%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1782805&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Last week, Elon Musk took to Twitter to allege that a \u201cstalker\u201d had blocked the car carrying Musk\u2019s 2-year-old son and climbed onto its hood. His post suggested that an app providing real-time data on private airplane flights facilitated the attack.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Like any dad, Musk was angered and outraged, but unlike any other dad, Musk could take immediate action. He announced a new Twitter rule that prohibits \u201cdoxxing\u201d of individuals\u2019 real-time locations as a public safety violation and temporarily suspended several journalists, including some from The Washington Post and CNN, for violating the policy.<\/p>\n<p>As if coordinated by a dramatic script \u2014 <em>enter Outrage downstage center<\/em> \u2014 journalists, tech commentators, and even human rights activists denounced Musk for First Amendment hypocrisy. But it is the journalists\u2019 hypocrisy that truly staggers. Those same reporters who denounce Musk said nothing (and continue to say nothing) about Twitter\u2019s prior management banning Alex Berenson\u2019s reporting of true facts about Covid, its suppression of the New York Post and the Hunter Biden laptop story, or perhaps the greatest First Amendment travesty of our time: collusion between the FBI and Big Tech platforms to control American political debate during the 2020 election. One could fairly respond to all this outrage as Marc Andreessen <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pmarca\/status\/1603631535659237377\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">did<\/a>: \u201cA warm welcome to all the newest converts to the great American cause of free speech.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This result does not surprise conservatives who know that corporate media journalists and fellow institutional apparatchiks follow power, not principle. But, what of Musk\u2019s principle? Is he a hypocrite? From a free speech perspective, Musk\u2019s actions are defensible. Platforms have long banned\u00a0<em>types\u00a0<\/em>of content such as nudity, grotesque gore \u2014 and speech that puts people in immediate harm. Real-time location doxxing is of a piece. If you\u2019re OK with Facebook eliminating nudity, real-time doxxing likely has equally bad effects.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Further, laws aimed to end Big Tech censorship would allow Musk\u2019s new rules. For instance, the recently upheld Texas social media law, <a href=\"https:\/\/capitol.texas.gov\/tlodocs\/872\/billtext\/pdf\/HB00020F.pdf#navpanes=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">H.B. 20<\/a>, only prohibits\u00a0<em>viewpoint<\/em>\u00a0discrimination. The law follows Supreme Court precedent that distinguishes between viewpoint discrimination, which censors on the basis of beliefs or positions on various matters, and discrimination which prohibits <em>categories <\/em>of speech. To illustrate, the Texas law allows Facebook to ban nudity, but not advocates of naturism. Musk\u2019s rule is viewpoint-neutral, prohibiting a type of speech: real-time doxxing. All may criticize the rule for any reason.<\/p>\n<p>But, what about the First Amendment? If Twitter were the government, would Musk\u2019s rule pass constitutional muster? It might. Given that the government can punish publication of sorts of private data \u2014 ranging from intimate photographs under \u201crevenge porn\u201d laws to educational records to medical records and classified documents \u2014 a law prohibiting publication of real-time data might be constitutional. Similarly, courts have held that firms are under no obligation to deal with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/advice-guidance\/competition-guidance\/guide-antitrust-laws\/single-firm-conduct\/refusal-deal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">competitors<\/a> \u2014 and thus Elon\u2019s recent, perhaps ill-advised, banning of links to competitor social media companies is constitutionally defensible too. In any case, Elon is not spitting on the First Amendment.<\/p>\n<p>But, the regime journalists\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Twitter CEO Elon Musk\u2019s new rule is viewpoint-neutral, instead prohibiting a type of speech: real-time doxxing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1639,"featured_media":1782808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[8303,7446,6962,4935,10905,4249,6919,3852,4842,10904,4600,4253,3635],"class_list":["post-1782805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-no","tag-not","tag-the","tag-amendment","tag-are","tag-elon","tag-federalist","tag-first","tag-musks","tag-odds","tag-policies","tag-twitter","tag-with"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1639"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1782805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1782808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1782805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1782805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1782805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}