Who's For Free Speech?

Who's For Free Speech?

This has been the week of free speech. The brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk framed the recent past. Stopping him speaking by murdering him was the killers method. "Hate speech" was what the killer accused Kirk of.

The divided opinions in social media ranged from support for the assassin through to calls to violence by Kirk's supporters, notably articulated by an over-reacting Elon Musk at one point during a live speech to people on the Tommy Robinson march in London.

In almost all cases one side wants to characterize the other as conveying "hate speech" and seeks to close down that speech using a variety of methods.

Then Jimmy Kimmel weighed in. During a somewhat confusing monologue he seemed to accuse MAGA supporters of killing Charlie Kirk ("one of their own"). Very quickly the regulator of media went online to tell Kimmel's employer, ABC, to deal with this the "easy way" or the "hard way". Within hours Kimmel's show was taken off the air "indefinitely". Kimmel was essentially cancelled due to the regulators influence on ABC.

Kimmel has not yet taken to Youtube of Substack to create his own channel, but one imagines that cannot be too far from his thoughts as others have done.

All of this raises the question of free speech. How far should society go in protecting speech? For me, all speech should be protected. The very need for protection is especially relevant if I disagree with the speech. Hate speech itself should therefore be especially protected. Democracy cannot exist if speech is regulated. It is a zero sum point.

If it makes you angry, as much speech does, then articulate opposition to it. More speech is the antidote to speech you dislike.

The rise of personal media on Youtube, Substack, Social Media enables all speech to find a home and an audience, and that is just great.

Meanwhile a new issue is emerging. Should AI have freedom of speech?

This week the issue of how much scope AI has to learn is front and center.

In the 'Interview of the Week' with Andrew Keen, Marshall Poe of The New Books Network states:

" AI companies appear to scrape podcast content without permission or payment, then repackage it as their own product." and later "The cost of that theft has gone to zero,"

This framing of reality is deeply flawed. As an observer of the ecosystem with decades of experience in tech I can say for sure that AI does not steal and repackage content. Only a shallow understanding of how AI works would suffice to render the claim ridiculous. AI reads, listens, views content just as a human does. The Courts have so far found this to be the case. AI is not copying, repackaging or stealing. it is learning.

On those rare occasions when AI learns on stolen content, as with Anthropic and the pirated books, it has been severely punished. But that behavior is not typical of AI.

We all need to turn down the dial on demonizing those we disagree with and also on AI. The success of America - as Noah Smith argues in Noahpinion this week - is founded on an absolute definition of the first amendment. Nothing is outside the scope of that - not hate speech, not misinformation, not disinformation, not opinions of any kind. Cancelling speech or a speaker is advocated on all sides of the political spectrum. It is an intolerant and insecure reaction to disagreement. Assassination is thankfully rare, but not zero. Firing or suspension is less rare. Both are abominations and an affront to civilised society.

Of course, if speech promotes illegal action that then occurs it enters a space of law, and the illegal actions and the original incitement, can be punished under existing laws. The speech is no longer protected. But the incitement has to be explicit, direct and proven. Not implied.

So .... that is my thought for the week.

Essays

Without free speech, America is nothing

Noahpinion • September 19, 2025

Essay•Regulation•FreeSpeech•First Amendment•FCC