The Selective Limitation of Certain Politic Views

Rohin Dhaliwal and Anthony Gu (G9)

Published Issue 1 2020-2021

Topical

A critical aspect of democracy is freedom of speech - whether that be through the United States’ First Amendment, Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, or another democratic constitutional document. However, many of today’s companies, such as media sites and corporate retailers, have allowed their own political biases to impede the sharing of certain news and opinions. In order to have meaningful discussions in our increasingly partisan society, it is important to differentiate between outright hate speech and merely controversial opinions. “Hate speech” is defined by the United Nations as “any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are”. The examples presented in this article pertain to the United States, which echoes this definition in their legal system.

Some individuals with conservative values claim social media platforms are biased toward the left. This claim is difficult to prove though also difficult to disprove. Many opinionated political posts have been taken down or flagged as “misleading” over the past few years. When conservatives say media platforms are biased, they usually refer to selective moderation. For example, on October 14, 2020, an article published by New York Post was restricted by Facebook and Twitter. The article itself was quite controversial, regarding emails and messages supposedly pulled from Hunter Biden’s laptop, the son of the then Democratic Presidential nominee, Joe Biden. If users tried to share the story, they would get an automated message declaring “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” This sparked outrage among conservatives, and also provoked debates on how false information should be handled on social media. Afterwards, the New York Post wrote about this issue, deeming it “an act of modern totalitarianism”. Ironically - and without commenting on the accuracy of the article - it turned out that by censoring that particular story, it became the most-discussed article of the entire week on both Facebook and Twitter.

Selective limitation is not just being conducted through social media; brick and mortar stores have also been selectively limiting the range of literature on their shelves. The revoking of Abigail Shrier’s recent book illustrates this. Shrier, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, recently published Irreversible Damage, a book outlining the growing social phenomenon of transgender surgery among the demographic of teenage girls. In her book, Shrier expressed her view that there are many harms associated with underage medical “transitions” - surgeries performed on young people who do not have fully developed decision-making skills. Shortly after, some people who disagreed with Shrier were enraged. For example, one Twitter user known as “Ten ACAB” (an acronym for the incredibly derogatory phrase “all cops are b*******”) Tweeted: “I think the trans community deserves a response from @AskTarget @Target as to why they are selling this book about the ‘transgender epidemic sweeping the country’ Trigger Warning : Transphobia”. Target then responded to this single complaint with the following message and shortly after stopped selling the book:

While Shrier’s book appears to be controversial, her book does not seem to incite violence or hate against the transgender community. Of course, if it did, the ban would have been completely justified. However, in a reflective article, Shrier confirmed that she “wrote specifically about the sudden, severe spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls”, saying she “fully support[s] medical transition for mature adults.” She compared this “transition” to underage drinking, driving, and smoking, all of which are illegal; a child doesn’t even decide what they eat for dinner. Target did not tolerate this.

Regardless of political views, Shrier distinctly clarified that she is not transphobic nor does she disagree with transitions for adults. Target disagreed with her conclusions and deemed it right to stop selling her book. Disagreement is completely natural - healthy, even - as long as civility is always maintained, everyone is heard, and the law is respected. This pluralistic coexistence allows us to have democracy, but Target has disregarded this concept. As Friedrich Nietzsche writes in his book The Dawn of Day, “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

While neither of the examples presented in this article are true government censorship, companies have significant power in the knowledge of the people; they decide what we see online and what we can buy at stores. Of course, in our free market, companies choose what they put forward - there are finite pages in a newspaper and finite shelves in a store - but by limiting the diversity of political views presented, the population will be made to think analogously with the holders of information. The question is: who gets to restrict what types of speech and to what extent?