Who stole the microphone |
THE idea that free speech is an unbreakable part of modern civilization is being put to a serious and disturbing test.
It is the new normal to believe that freedom of speech is either dead or on life support. This isn’t just the complaint of people whose abhorrent opinions are being questioned; it’s a deeper look at how free speech is being changed, limited and used as a weapon around the world. The proof is not in the suppression of one voice, but in the widespread change in the way people talk to each other in public. John Stuart Mill, a philosopher, famously said, “If all of humanity minus one were of one opinion, humanity would have no more right to silence that one person than he, if he had the power, would have to silence humanity.”
Consider the digital public square. Algorithms, not editors or lawmakers, now act as the primary arbiters of speech. They amplify outrage to drive engagement, creating echo chambers in which moderate voices are drowned out. Yet their content moderation, opaque and inconsistent, can erase legitimate debate alongside genuine hate speech. This is the new frontier of censorship, one that novelist Cory Doctorow describes as “a world where censorship is created not by people sitting in a room deciding what to allow, but by a set of algorithms designed to maximize profit.”
Simultaneously, the social media opinion court frequently mandates cancellation rather than debate and........