With many conservative policymakers and organizations taking a sudden pro-censorial turn and suggesting that government regulation of social media platforms is warranted, it’s a good time for them to re-read President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 veto of Fairness Doctrine legislation. Here’s the key line:
History has shown that the dangers of an overly timid or biased press cannot be averted through bureaucratic regulation, but only through the freedom and competition that the First Amendment sought to guarantee.
That wisdom is just as applicable today when some conservatives suggest that government intervention is needed to address what they regardless as “bias” or “unfair” treatment on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or whatever else. Ignoring the fact that such meddling would likely violate property rights and freedom of contract — principles that most conservatives say they hold dear — efforts to empower the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, or other regulators would be hugely misguided on First Amendment grounds.
President Reagan understood that there was a better way to approach these issues that was rooted in innovation and First Amendment protections. Here’s hoping that conservatives remember his sage advice. Read his entire veto message here.
Additional Reading:
by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka — (Ver. 1.0 — Summer 2009)
We are attempting to articulate the core principles of cyber-libertarianism to provide the public and policymakers with a better understanding of this alternative vision for ordering the affairs of cyberspace. We invite comments and suggestions regarding how we should refine and build-out this outline. We hope this outline serves as the foundation of a book we eventually want to pen defending what we regard as “Real Internet Freedom.” [Note: Here’s a printer-friendly version, which we also have embedded down below as a Scribd document.]
I. What is Cyber-Libertarianism?
Cyber-libertarianism refers to the belief that individuals—acting in whatever capacity they choose (as citizens, consumers, companies, or collectives)—should be at liberty to pursue their own tastes and interests online.
Generally speaking, the cyber-libertarian’s motto is “Live & Let Live” and “Hands Off the Internet!” The cyber-libertarian aims to minimize the scope of state coercion in solving social and economic problems and looks instead to voluntary solutions and mutual consent-based arrangements.
Cyber-libertarians believe true “Internet freedom” is freedom
from state action; not freedom for the State to reorder our affairs to supposedly make certain people or groups better off or to improve some amorphous “public interest”—an all-to convenient facade behind which unaccountable elites can impose their will on the rest of us.
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Much like the Beacon incident before it, I have mixed feeling about this latest kerfuffle over Facebook’s changes to its privacy policy.
On one hand, I just don’t see what the big deal is. People act like Facebook is taking away all their “rights” or possessions, which is just silly. They were just clarifying how information would be used. In one sense, I feel like saying ‘Chill out. And if you don’t like Facebook’s policies, go use some other social networking site for God’s sake!’
On the other hand, I appreciate the fact that some people are far more sensitive about these things and are seeking to collectively pressure Facebook to change its approach to information use and ownership, and I’m fine with that. In fact, like the Beacon hullabaloo, it’s an example of what Berin Szoka and I have argued is the power of voluntary persuasion and social pressure to remedy privacy concerns before we call on government to adopt coercive, top-down, ham-handed, one-size-fits-all regulatory solutions. As we noted in our recent paper about the looming threat of online advertising regulation:
there are many indirect pressures and reputational incentives that provide an important check on the behavior of firms and the privacy policies they craft. Just as the Internet increases the ways advertisers can reach audiences, it increases the power audiences have to influence advertisers. For example, when Facebook introduced its Beacon program in 2007, which shared users’ online purchases with their friends without sufficient warning about how the program worked and the ability to opt-out of the program, the response was swift and effective: Users “collectively raised their voices” and “the privacy pendulum [swung] back into equilibrium” [according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.] Within two weeks of the Beacon program being first deployed, Facebook had created an opt-out procedure.
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.