Senate Bill 2373 would allow the Texas Attorney General to sue social media companies for restricting users’ freedom of expression. Such restrictions are widely being called censorship.
The truth is, no private entity can engage in censorship. It may ban the expression of certain ideas on its platform, but it cannot penalize individuals for expressing those ideas elsewhere. Only government can do that.
Conservatives claim that platforms such as Facebook censor conservative ideas. Their response is to force Facebook to refrain from any restrictions on ideas that they–conservatives–support. This is a very dangerous approach.
The right to property means the freedom to create, attain, use, keep, trade, and dispose of material values as one judges best. For a social media company, this means establishing terms and conditions for using its platform. If an individual finds those terms and conditions unreasonable, he can go elsewhere to express his ideas.
But when government begins dictating what ideas can be expressed, it is a small step to dictate what ideas can’t be expressed. Conservatives may find laws such as SB2373 beneficial today, but what happens when Leftists are in control?
Conservatives want to force Facebook to allow anti-abortion posts and pro-gun posts. But what if Leftists introduced a law that would force conservative platforms to post pro-abortion articles and anti-gun articles? Conservatives will have no moral ground to stand on, for it was they who introduced the idea of regulating the content of websites.
We may not always like how others choose to use their property. But if we want the freedom to use our property as we judge best, we must defend the freedom of others to do the same.