Despite Challenges, Free Speech Has a Bright Future | Opinion

“Of all rights,” abolitionist Frederick Douglass warned us, freedom of speech “is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power.”
It staggers the mind to imagine what Douglass would think of the state of free speech in today’s world. An unprecedented number of people around the world have virtually limitless access to information and communication, but tyrants in every nation see that as a problem to be solved through censorship.
Yet, even though it’s easy to be pessimistic about the future for free speech, there’s a good case to be made that we’re standing on the brink of a crucial breakthrough for this fundamental freedom.
Consider three of the latest flashpoints on this crucial topic. On August 24, French authorities arrested Telegram founder Pavel Durov, charging him with a litany of indictments stemming from his unwillingness to censor content at the government’s behest. Three days later, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to Congress admitting that, unlike Durov, he had censored important news stories under pressure from President Joe Biden’s White House.
Most recently, on August 30, a Brazilian Supreme Court Justice ordered that X (formerly known as Twitter) be blocked nationwide after Elon Musk refused to comply with orders forcing him to censor content at the government’s request.
In each scenario, principals at three of the world’s most powerful social media platforms were pressured to comply with government demands to either censor content or expose private users for government punishment. Yet, with the exception of Zuckerberg—who vowed to do better going forward—the heads of these powerful platforms stood their ground.
That courage may represent a shift after many years of capitulation to authoritarian censorship from major digital platforms.
Would we have seen Twitter stand up to a government’s call for censorship under past leadership? Or, whether any of us find his apology convincing, would we have expected Zuckerberg to note specifically which stories his team censored at the White House’s request?
Of course not. These are new and welcome developments in the effort to protect against global censorship. Hopefully, this courage will inspire other important leaders to stand in the gap.
Whether we realize it or not, everyday citizens depend on business leaders like Musk, Durov, and Zuckerberg to resist overreaching government demands. When the leaders of these mediating institutions buckle, it makes all of us more vulnerable to cancellation and punishment.
That’s why ADF International mobilized over 50 international free speech advocates to send an open letter to Musk last year, calling on him to resist government pressure to censor users. And now ADF International has filed a petition with the Inter American Commission on Human Rights calling on it to hold Brazil accountable for its illegal censorship.
Unfortunately, as Zuckerberg’s letter confirms, government censorship has arrived on American soil. We even saw this play out in the financial sector this spring, when the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government revealed that the U.S. Treasury Department colluded with major banks to monitor transactions of ordinary citizens, suggesting they might present a threat for making purchases at Dick’s Sporting Goods, Bass Pro Shops, and Cabela’s, and buying “religious texts” like Bibles.
In its fishing expedition, the federal government also sought to flag my legal organization, Alliance Defending Freedom, as a potential “domestic terrorist” threat and targeted us for surveillance by major banks.
It’s obvious that this dystopian marriage between Big Brother and Big Banks should never have taken place. But it’s equally true to say it would have been impossible without the complicity of major players within the banking industry.
Free speech faces threats across the world, but key leaders are also rising to the occasion. Among the free speech clients at ADF and ADF International are two elected members of the Mexican government who were prosecuted for criticizing transgender ideology and a longtime member of the Finnish parliament who is being prosecuted for tweeting a Bible verse.
Every one of these courageous men and women could have backed down and accepted the falsehoods and oppression. Instead, they stood their ground because they knew they were the last line of defense between ordinary citizens and a censorial regime.
It took years, even decades, for censorship to rise to dangerous heights throughout the world. We shouldn’t expect the situation to change overnight, but we know that important movements start with courageous moments—and courage is contagious.
Kristen Waggoner is CEO and president of Alliance Defending Freedom and ADF International. Follow Kristen on Twitter @KWaggonerADF or follow ADF @ADFLegal.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.