Choosing Between the State and Social Media as the Arbiter of Decency and Truth

Vydáno: 07. 03. 2025 34 minút čítania

This paper examines the contrasting approaches to regulating hate speech and misinformation in Europe and the U.S., with a focus on the role of social media. Guided by interpretations of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, European nations maintain latitude to restrict speech harmful to society, including hate speech and misinformation. Conversely, in the U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court's First Amendment jurisprudence places significant burdens on the State's ability to regulate hate speech and misinformation. While hate speech and falsities can cause both individual and social harm, there are deleterious impacts of empowering the State to regulate these ideas. When the State can eliminate hate speech and false ideas from public discourse, society's ability to challenge those ideas is diminished, resulting in indolent public discourse. Moreover, in democratic states, the majority will inevitably define hate speech and truth, and those definitions can change with control of the State. To ensure consistency and legitimacy as control of the State changes, an unfettered marketplace of ideas must be allowed to flourish. The importance of ensuring that unfettered marketplace of ideas has never been more important considering the rise of social media. When the State extends its regulation of hate speech and lies to social media platforms, it exerts control over the locus of the most diverse group of ideas in human history.

Key words: Free Speech, Hate Speech, Regulation, Democracy, Social Media

McKechnie, D. B.: Choosing Between the State and Social Media as the Arbiter of Decency and Truth. Právny obzor, 107, 2024, special issue, pp. 4-20.

https://doi.org/10.31577/pravnyobzor.specialissue.2024.01

Introduction

Democracies face competing interests in a variety of ways. This is nowhere truer than balancing the right to free speech with the State's interest in protecting society. Certainly, in autocracies, there are no limits on suppressing speech when the State identifies ideas it believes will harm society. Democracies, however, respect the fundamental right of citizens to share and receive ideas, even those ideas that are distasteful, offensive, and dangerous. Whether facilitating the search for truth or enabling self-governance, the protection of free speech is vital to a well-functioning democratic state. Nevertheless, every democratic state places some limitations on the freedom of speech when the harm outweighs the benefits to society. This article explores where to strike the balance between protecting free speech and regulating hate speech and lies.

When examining the European and U.S. approaches to this dilemma, two options emerge. The State can either have more latitude or less latitude to regulate hate speech and lies. When considering the impacts of granting the State greater flexibility to regulate speech, two concerns arise. First, the greater the regulation of harmful speech, the greater the likelihood that individuals and society become lax in their ability to evaluate, challenge, and reconsider ideas. Second, as with any State decision, the regulation of hate speech and lies will simply reflect decisions by the governing majority. These concerns are particularly problematic regarding the identification and exclusion of hate speech and lies from the public debate on social media. To be sure, hate speech and lies can proliferate on social media. nevertheless, the same characteristics that allow those ideas to proliferate make social media an unprecedented tool for communication. Social media platforms are the borderless town square where people, including those who dissent from the majority view, can most actively engage in the debate of public issues.

1. Regulating Hate Speech in Europe and the U.S.

The beliefs and ideas expressed on social media platforms are not exceptional when compared with those spoken in the corporeal world. Social media's virtual nature certainly erases the traditional social cues and norms, resulting in less inhibited communication of hateful ideas. Nevertheless, the public discourse in democracies, well before social media, has certainly included hate speech. Whether expressed directly to a person, or about a group of people, hate speech-speech that incites intolerance and disparages people based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, or some other characteristic-has routinely been a source of attempted state regulation. ¹⁾ The State's authority to regulate hate speech, however, is not consistent across democracies. The European Court of Human Rights has interpreted the European Convention on Human Rights as providing member states with wider latitude to regulate hate speech. The U.S. Supreme Court, conversely, has interpreted the U.S. Constitution in a way that removes all options for the State to regulate hate speech.

1.1 Hate Speech and the European Court of Human Rights

Hate speech, in the European and U.S. contexts, has a long history. The rise of the Nazi party in Germany in the early Twentieth Century, for example, relied heavily on the denigration of minorities. ²⁾ This National experience with the impacts of dehumanization resulted in the Federal Republic of Germany codifying the recognition of human dignity in its constitution. ³⁾ Indeed, Germany's Basic Law-its constitution-ratified after World War II in 1949, listed human dignity as not only the first protected right but also included it in a "forever clause," shielding it from the amendment process. ⁴⁾ At the same time the "forever clause" shields human dignity from the amendment process, it also shields the right to free speech. ⁵⁾ Notably, while there are no limitations on the right to personal dignity, the text of the German Basic Law contains limitations on the right to free speech. more specifically and relevantly, the right to free speech is limited by the "the right to personal honor." ⁶⁾

Similarly, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) enshrines the freedoms of speech as a fundamental right, while at the same time placing limits on it. like the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, discussed below, Article 10 of the ECHR guarantees that "[e]veryone has the right to freedom of expression." ⁷⁾ However, unlike the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, Article 10 provides a list of interests that the State may rely upon to restrict the freedom of speech, including, most relevantly, restrictions "necessary in a democratic society, ... public safety, ... for the protection of health or morals, [and] for the protection of the reputation or rights of others" ⁸⁾ Moreover, Article 17 of the ECHR provides tha

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