Suzanne Nossel

Photo by Beowulf Sheehan

Every Friday, we discuss tricky questions about free speech and expression as they pertain to the ongoing pandemic with our CEO Suzanne Nossel, author of the newly released Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All, in our weekly PEN Pod segment “Tough Questions.” In this week’s episode, we discuss what’s going on in Portland, Oregon; breaking up the social media giants; and the continued spread of disinformation around COVID-19 and the coming elections.

On Wednesday, Congress hauled the major tech CEOs up to virtual Capitol Hill. They were grilled on content moderation, HR practices, their role in spreading disinformation. What kind of antitrust action could Congress take against the platforms, and does that worry you from a free expression point of view?
I think there are a number of novel theories that have been advanced about how you might take antitrust action against the platforms. They do not fit into traditional definitions of monopoly that date back to the days of standard oil. The ways in which they are anti-competitive don’t meet those definitions, and so, it’s been necessary for experts to theorize about how to describe the ways that these platforms are inimical to competition, and to come up with new formulas and types of economics analysis that substantiate that. So it’s kind of new territory that everybody is on, but it’s moving ahead quickly.

One of the striking things about the hearings was that there’s so much more expertise now on Capitol Hill about these issues than there was even a couple of years ago when members of Congress had to have Mark Zuckerberg explain to them the very basics of Facebook’s business model. I think those days are over and we have a set of members of Congress who have educated themselves and they’ve brought on sophisticated, tech-savvy staff who are helping them break all this down.


“I think one of the things that’s so powerful about platforms and makes them compelling is that there’s a critical mass of people there. And so is that ever going to change, even if there are more alternatives in the marketplace?. . . I don’t think there are any guarantees here in terms of the impact on free speech.”


When it comes to free speech, I see the antitrust issues as primarily separate. I don’t think they’re going to remedy the concerns we have about most forms of harm from online speech—things like disinformation, cyberbullying, online harassment, the spread of terrorist propaganda, hateful and noxious speech online. I don’t think breaking up the platform is going to do much about any of that. I think what it separates out, if it happens, are the different types of businesses that these companies are running and dictates that those be operated separately and have less ability to feed into one another, and that each one will be able to compete on its own terms in a particular segment, rather than this incredible integration that they have achieved.

I think where it could be a positive for free speech is if you had more sets of rules for content moderation that were out there in the marketplace, and you could choose between a platform that is very active in policing hate speech, for example, and one that’s much more permissive, depending on what kind of environment you want to be in. If you want to read and see and hear everything, maybe there’s a place you can do that. If you want something that is going to be much more civilized, having a choice that would afford you that. That’s a possible positive effect that could emerge from a more decentralized marketplace for online speech. I don’t think it’s a guarantee to believe that would come into the place. You’d have to think that there will be a much larger set of platforms and that audiences and users will distribute across them.


“We have a president that seems pretty desperate to cling onto power. He talked this week about potentially postponing the election. I think we absolutely cannot let our guard down, and we’re in uncharted territory in terms of a president who is willing to flout the First Amendment, is willing to do things that damage the U.S. reputation around the world, and is willing to antagonize city and state officials.”


I think one of the things that’s so powerful about platforms and makes them compelling is that there’s a critical mass of people there. And so is that ever going to change, even if there are more alternatives in the marketplace? Are people going to spread out? To date, some of the attempts to drive people off Facebook and Twitter to different platforms haven’t really panned out. So I don’t think there are any guarantees here in terms of the impact on free speech.

Federal law enforcement officials have agreed to at least a phased withdrawal from Portland, Oregon, following intensive standoffs and violence with mostly peaceful demonstrators in that city. Does it give you some hope that the administration is bucking to pressure? Particularly as this has been seen nearly universally as a direct threat to the First Amendment.
Yes and no. I’d say on one level, it’s heartening the courts. Some former military officials and higher cabinet level officers have spoken out so forcefully against what has gone on, in terms of unmarked cars and unidentified federal personnel rounding up demonstrators on the streets of Portland. So, I think the outcries have been extremely important. But I don’t think there are any guarantees here. We have a president that seems pretty desperate to cling onto power. He talked this week about potentially postponing the election. I think we absolutely cannot let our guard down, and we’re in uncharted territory in terms of a president who is willing to flout the First Amendment, is willing to do things that damage the U.S. reputation around the world, and is willing to antagonize city and state officials. It gives me a little bit of comfort, but not a whole lot.


“One of the eeriest things is the silence of these federal officers as crowds are sort of begging them to identify themselves or explain what the individual they’re apprehending has done wrong, and they’re just stone-faced. There’s no sense that there’s a dialogue between law enforcement and the community that they serve.”


The day of your book launch, you were in conversation with Wajajat Ali, in which you discussed how, as someone who’s been on the international stage as a State Department official, something about those unmarked vehicles struck a chord with you.
Yeah, because it was imagery that I am used to seeing around the world as this terrifying use of brute force. More recently, it makes me think of the scenes from Wuhan, China, where people were dragged from their homes to be put under quarantine. They were kicking and screaming, and it was sort of like, “This is what this type of authoritarian society is able to do to its own people.” And seeing some kind of similar looking strong-arm tactics against individuals here.

One of the eeriest things is the silence of these federal officers as crowds are sort of begging them to identify themselves or explain what the individual they’re apprehending has done wrong, and they’re just stone-faced. There’s no sense that there’s a dialogue between law enforcement and the community that they serve. Of course, these officials are from federal agencies—they’re not local police, they don’t have any connective tissue with these local communities, and it’s fearsome. They’re not military, but they, in some cases, are wearing fatigues or other garments that make you think there are soldiers in American streets. That’s something that we are used to seeing in Iran, Hong Kong, and Beijing, but not here in the United States.


“One of the most serious problems is that you have an administration that has never taken the threat of foreign disinformation seriously. President Trump has taken the approach since he first entered office that giving any credence to the idea of Russian election interference would have undercut his victory back in 2016. And so, we have not mobilized our intelligence agencies, our infrastructure, or our private sector in the kind of concerted effort that I think is necessary to safeguard our democracy.”


Both the Associated Press and The New York Times this week reported that Russian intelligence services are spreading this information about COVID-19. Meanwhile, the president’s son has his Twitter account suspended for posting a video spreading mistruths about the virus. How are Americans meant to tell fact from fiction right now, especially as we head into what could be a very contentious election season?
It’s really precarious. That’s why at PEN America, we’re devoting so much energy to fighting against disinformation and putting out primers that help people identify it, and help them avoid becoming a vector for its spread. We’re working on how we can elucidate aspects of the election that are going to be different this time around, and let people know what to expect so that when things seem a little off or not what they’re used to, they don’t immediately turn to the conspiracy theories.

One of the most serious problems is that you have an administration that has never taken the threat of foreign disinformation seriously. President Trump has taken the approach since he first entered office that giving any credence to the idea of Russian election interference would have undercut his victory back in 2016. And so, we have not mobilized our intelligence agencies, our infrastructure, or our private sector in the kind of concerted effort that I think is necessary to safeguard our democracy. We remain very vulnerable, and it’s pretty terrifying to have the federal government asleep at the switch when it comes to such a direct threat to our democracy.

That really leaves the job to civil society, organizations, and media organizations to expose this, to contextualize disinformation when they come across it, to individual citizens to be disciplined and scrutinous of what they are seeing and reading, and to try to inoculate themselves against disinformation. Things are moving very quickly, and the purveyors of disinformation are becoming ever more sophisticated. They hone in on really narrow communities in order to try to achieve a desired result, and their tactics may not really see the light of day until after the election, if ever. So it’s a worrisome scenario, no question.


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