You get to sell rotten tomatoes at your theater once
Without belaboring the point, the early United States was not a free speech fantasy. 1A didn’t even apply to the states until 1925. Public figures weren’t fair game until 1964. Speech is restrained in many ways, and that is a good thing. Free speech exists for a narrowband of reasons, here are the four that you would hear about in law school: self-fulfillment (especially religious and artistic expression), advancing knowledge and discovering truth, stabilizing community, involvement in democratic decision-making. For these ends, responsible speech is necessary and even encouraged (notice how the Constitution is clear about having a post office). Free speech was not a means without an end.
For a window of time in the late 1990s through around 2008, the Federal Courts interpreted Section 230 of the CDA to provide almost unlimited immunity for internet stuff from defamation suits. A number of plaintiffs lost cases that they clearly should have won, for more read this book. On first hearing, it seems that the courts will decide something absurd and awful once, but once subjected to the same absurdities, they get it right. These days, the most expert court (the 9th circuit) is a toss-up on this question. The good old days of free speech are long gone, at least if irresponsible lies and crimes are the stuff of freedom.
An entire industry lore has formed around section 230, especially the idea that if one doesn’t moderate, they aren’t liable (there was always good faith moderation in 230). On a good day, there is a deeply religious faith in emergence playing out in the talk. The 21st century version of a thousand typewriters with primates is that noise will somehow transmogrify into beautiful music with absolutely zero effort. On a bad day, the fetish for noise is a way for sadists to treat their desire to inflect suffering on others as a virtue.
Facebook’s golden age had nothing to do with Mark Z but with the phased expansion of Facebook into a speech environment with stable norms of public discourse. The expansion brought the ecstasy of communication back with moderation almost by accident. Our collective tolerance (through boundary violations, see Petronio) for the good feelings of communication was readjusted coincidently with collapsing public norms on an increasingly ubiquitous platform. Moderation would be critical for any of it to continue. Gillespie is essential reading here: moderation is the product.
So what is Musk doing? First, he is noising the platform this is basically doing an attack against your own product. The signal needs to be really hard to find while disconnecting the truth function of verification, in short he is inventing a problem. Second, he is offering a solution: you can pay for signal through a new kind of verification product. This is the full-on clown version of free speech where there is no connection to truth or self-governance, only profit or possibly pain. The real business of Twitter was moderating the pool of content created by existing important people, and by others en masse, so that attention was focused, but not too focused. Burns from a laser of overly concentrated attention scar. From a first amendment perspective, great moderation is the highest expression of free speech, it requires labor, thought, and courage. It is lucrative because it is hard. Musk will soon discover that selling rotten tomatoes to hecklers is a one-time play, once the talent know that you indulge bad behavior, they won’t be back, and the rest of the audience won’t either.
