Social media started 2025 with a bang! Mr Musk expressed opinions on X about various UK politicians and UK issues, and Mr Zuckerberg announced the end of Meta’s fact-checking programme and changes to its content moderation policy. These two events produced lots of commentary about social media platforms and ‘free speech’ in the traditional media and in political circles. The Badger sighed on reading much of the discourse because ‘free speech’ has existed long before the existence of social media platforms. There are a wide variety of views about the importance of social media for ‘free speech’, but the Badger’s view is simple. Society as a whole, through its institutions, laws, and cultural norms, is the bastion of ‘free speech’, not Mr Musk, Mr Zuckerberg, or anyone else who owns a social media platform which, let’s not forget, is a business striving to maximise profit from its users.
Musing on some of the media discourse over a coffee on returning from a walk through a snowy park, the Badger’s thoughts converged on three points. The first was that social media is here to stay and cannot be ignored. With ‘free speech’, however, comes responsibility, and this seems to be in relatively short supply in the social media domain. The second was that social media platforms are businesses, and those that own or run them have a vested interest, an inevitable focus on making money, and an aversion to regulation. Messrs Musk, Zuckerberg, and indeed other leaders of massive corporations, will always have ‘an agenda’, and what they say and how they act will always be determined by that agenda and their vested interest. The relationship between social media and ‘free speech’ must be considered with this in mind.
The third point was more holistic. It embraced more of our current world’s dynamics. Technology, ‘free speech’, and social media may be components of world dynamics, but the recent discourse illustrates something about the wielding of power in today’s world. That something is captured by John Lennon’s words uttered a quarter of a century ago. He said ‘Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends, and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it’. He has a point. ’Free speech’ existed when he said those words, and social media didn’t.
As the Badger finished his coffee, he decided that the key take-away from his musing was simply this, not to let tech and social media dominate one’s life. After all, life will go on if social media didn’t exist. Outsourcing one’s life to social media and being a slave to its content is a risky thing to do, but if you do, then keep John Lennon’s words in mind and don’t be naïve about the veracity of the content you consume…
