COMMENTARY Amid this election, we have to figure out how to keep toxic disinformation like X's from undermining U.S. democracy — but recall that protecting even Musk muck underpins U.S. democracy.
I’ll feel the need to take a shower after I write this. But I confess the approach of the U.S. presidential election has me inclined to defend Elon Musk’s free-speech claims in Brazil.
Let me first be very clear: calling X a social media platform is like calling a septic tank a public swimming pool.
Since billionaire narcissist Musk bought the 280-characters-only bulletin board formerly known as Twitter two years ago, X has become a disinformation porn site, both right- and left-wing — but especially right-wing, because that’s the brand of disinformation porn Musk likes.
This week’s wanton misrepresentation of a 2019 Kamala Harris video by The Creepy Kennedy (Robert F. Jr.) is just the latest of countless lies crawling all over X like maggots on rotted sirloin.
READ MORE: Is Bolsonaro's ban really the hemispheric example Brazil wants to set?
But that doesn’t mean I’m applauding the Brazilian high court’s moves in recent days to ban X inside Latin America’s largest country. It’s arguing that too much of the site’s content is more dishonest than the calorie counter on a churrasco menu. Musk, meanwhile, is ranting that his free-speech rights are being bludgeoned by a cabal of Brazilian Bolsheviks.
And he appears to be right, at least about the free speech part. Or rather, he would be right if we were talking about U.S. 1st Amendment free-speech standards. But Musk is facing Brazil’s sovereign standards. He acknowledged as much this week when, tail placed firmly between his legs, he had his satellite internet service Starlink itself agree to block X in Brazil so it can keep doing business there.
Still, I’m an American — a 1st Amendment pearl-clutcher, as many of my non-American colleagues jokingly call me — and I get uneasy really easily when I see any country censor content that doesn’t meet the bar of a safety or slander threat to a person or the public.
Calling X a social media platform today is like calling a septic tank a public swimming pool — but I'm nonetheless inclined to defend Elon Musk in Brazil.
If a private platform wants to erase accounts that are disgorging disinformation, that’s its prerogative. But when a court or a government muzzles expression that may be untruthful but not harmful — harmful the way TikTok’s indulgence of cyberbullying hurts kids, for example, or the way then President Donald Trump’s tweets incited mob violence — then we’re stepping into dicey territory.
So far Brazil’s Supreme Court has not shown if the X content it’s upset about is genuinely harmful — a call for an assassination, let’s say — or merely untruthful. Until I see proof of the former, then I have to believe, by my 1st Amendment criteria, that the justices are overstepping.
Free-for-all
And no, I’m not swayed by leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s argument that Musk’s wealth “doesn’t obligate the world to tolerate his far-right free-for-all.” Lula may be right; but I’ve yet to hear him confront the far-left free-for-all that media like the Venezuelan dictatorship’s mouthpiece, Telesur, is allowed to spew in Brazil.
My bigger concern is how this Brazilian battle relates to American civics — especially since this year’s presidential election is being billed as a last stand for U.S. democracy.
That takes us back to that 2019 video of then Senator and now Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has endorsed the Republican candidate, former President Trump, fraudulently suggested on X this week that the clip shows Harris this year warning that if she wins in November, she’ll shut down X à la Brazil.
Kamala Harris: "He [Musk] has lost his privileges."
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) September 2, 2024
Can someone please explain to her that freedom of speech is a RIGHT, not a "privilege"?
Kamala Harris: "There has to be a responsibility placed on these social media sites to understand their power."
Translation: "If they… https://t.co/BzuTYoJjuV
What Harris actually said there five years ago was that Twitter should cancel then President Trump’s user privileges because he’d “proven himself to be willing to obstruct justice … [which] impacts people’s perceptions about what they should and should not do.”
Trump was in fact impeached that year for the sort of obstruction Harris cited. (He was later acquitted by the Senate.) And Twitter did expel him from the platform after his posts stoked the deadly Jan. 6 riots. (Musk let him back on in 2022.)
But what’s also striking about Harris’ complaint is the fear of disinformation “impacting people’s perceptions” in warped ways.
That’s what’s spooking Brazil’s Supreme Court. We should be smarter.
We’ve got to get a better handle on how to prevent that abhorrent sludge from undermining U.S. democracy — while remembering that protecting the rights of even Musk muck is what underpins U.S. democracy.
