In my note, “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Tweets,” I suggested that when you mix social media with leaders who have no concerns about spreading lies, violence is inevitable. It seems like it would be true enough, but is it? The underlying assumption is that violence, particularly group / mob violence, is a function of the speed at which ideas are spread and communities can be formed. Whereas in the past this was limited by a variety of physical obstacles, in today’s digital environment, those things happen instantaneously.
However, there is another factor at play on the path to violence: leaders.
Consider a forest fire: sometimes the underlying conditions are ripe for a blaze to erupt. There has been no rain and all the wood and natural materials are as dry as can be. All it takes is a little spark to set the thing off. On the other hand, an arsonist can also come on the scene and spray gasoline everywhere and be the key factor in getting the blaze started. I think the question at hand with regard to social media is: has the medium of the internet made the underlying conditions for violence so ripe that we’ve fundamentally reduced the amount of leadership required to get mob violence going? It’s not to say that social media has no effect (I think it’s made things more dry, to use the metaphor), but has it truly changed the game with regard to free speech and violence?
It’ll take a lot more research and analysis to even attempt to answer that question well. (if it’s even possible). But I think it’s worth exploring the question so we can at least be clear about the assumptions at play when we talk about regulating speech.
The Medium: Does the Internet Make Speech Inherently more Violent? I think the arguments in favor of this are pretty clear so I’m not going to restate them now. And if this is true the implications are straightforward: we’ll need more restrictive laws on speech. But what if the internet has not fundamentally changed the nature of speech?
The Man: What if the Capitol violence was more a result of a rare ability that leader’s like Trump have to motivate and inspire action? Of course, social media played a part, but can we say for certain that had this occurred 30 years ago there would have been no riot? I’m not so sure. In this scenario it would still be right to shut Trump down, BUT it doesn’t mean we need to fundamentally change the rules of social media or free speech in general. Censorship becomes a much more narrow proposition (in theory at least). Here’s a good thread that expands on this point. It defines what happened as an “omega” event. Something extremely difficult to predict, and therefore difficult to protect against (and to be clear, this was easy to predict in weeks leading up to the riot. But not necessarily 4 years ago.)
https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1348549664245628928?s=20
One caveat to all this is that it’s not an either/or situation by any means. There can be social movements that grow from ground up because the cause is so clear and people need little motivation from a leader to act. And of course, leaders have stirred people to violence well before the internet was around. Social movements, violent or otherwise, are a combination of bottoms-up actions and inspiring leaders. But the question at hand is whether the internet has made the quality of leadership materially less important in that equation.
I think if we’re going to be serious about policy on this front we have to be clear about the assumptions we’re making. And I’m not so certain that the internet has made speech inherently more violent. I think the question deserves much deeper consideration before we jump to that conclusion.
Intergalactic Dance 