A Great Letter Against Government Censorship
The fact that we need to do this is a bad sign; the fact that someone is doing it is a good sign.
“Et tu, Acemoglu?”
Yesterday, I signed the letter below. If you are a fellow academic, even a retired one like me, I urge you to sign.
I sometimes will sign letters that I agree with at least 95% of. On this one, I agreed with everything. It says what needs to be said and does so in pithy way.
For some reason, the links didn’t translate when I copied but virtually all the important claims are backed with links. You can go here to see that.
Against Censorship and Its Academic Supporters
No one should prize the free exchange of ideas more than academics, whose entire purpose is to develop, challenge, and improve ideas. Endorsing state control of pub- lic discourse through the censorship of political opponents should be anathema to any defender of democracy. We are thus dismayed by the public letter “Against Big Tech’s Attack on Digital Sovereignties,” signed by many notable academics, including Daron Acemoglu and Thomas Piketty.
Although the letter mentions “Big Techs” in general, it singles out Elon Musk’s X as an “instance in a wider effort to restrict” Brazil’s (and other nations’) “digital de- velopmental agenda”. We attempt to understand what this means, but first it is worth reviewing the facts.
Brazil’s law establishes that any judicial order to remove content from a social plat- form must specify what content is to be removed (Law 12.965, Art. 19, §1). The law also affirms the constitutional protection of free speech (Art. 5, IV, IX, and Art. 220§2). Nevertheless, Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the suspension of the accounts of influencers, journalists and even members of Congress, all of whom were critics of the current president. X complied with these orders until April 2024, when Elon Musk stated this would violate laws in Brazil. Moraes’s threats of fines and the jailing of X’s legal representative lead X to close its office in Brazil. Moraes ordered the suspension of X for all Brazilians along with the seizure of Starlink’s assets to cover the fines he imposed. Note that Starlink is a separate company, with no connection to X besides the fact that Elon Musk is a shareholder in both. A report by the U.S. Congress found that “Moraes ordered the censorship of a Brazilian citizen for criticizing Moraes for censoring Brazilians” (p. 5).
However, instead of siding with X, the law, and Brazilians’ freedom of expression, the academics’ letter condemns Elon Musk for providing the only digital platform in Brazil that refused to censor speech deemed undesirable by some public officials. It seems the signatories believe that governments should be able to decide what their citizens can and cannot hear, and use all their might to silence criticism — essentially endorsing authoritarianism.
The letter portrays X as if it somehow controls the flow of information in Brazil, rather than being just one of many platforms through which Brazilians access information. It also links X to the incitement of the acts of January 8, 2023, and suggests that its suspension is motivated by its refusal to block accounts involved in this instigation. However, as previously mentioned, X did not refuse to comply with any orders prior to April 2024.
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Introducing the unfamiliar concept of “digital sovereignty”, the letter demands that “Big Tech companies cease their attempts to sabotage” Brazil’s “digital agenda”, which they urge the government to implement. It is unclear what this agenda is, but it appears to be a rehash of old industrial policy ideas, which usually create inefficiencies and losses for companies and consumers, while generating significant profits for well-connected businessmen. Even if this outcome does not materalize, there is a greater danger today: the possibility that the government is able to silence opposition, paving the way for an authoritarian regime.
On one point, however, we must admit some agreement with the signatories of the letter: there is indeed a danger that Big Tech companies could cooperate to undermine democracy. In fact, many of them appear to be working with governments to suppress viewpoints they find unfavorable. Brazil serves as a notable example, but similar dynam- ics have been observed in the U.S. as well, with many public figures expressing support for speech control. The only platform that attempted to resist this pressure and defend freedom of expression was X. The world owes Elon Musk gratitude for safeguarding this fundamental right and maintaining X as a space where all voices can be heard. In doing so, he is arguably protecting democracy — even from those academics who seem undis- turbed by authoritarianism, as long as it aligns with their preferred political ideology.
In summary, we uphold free speech and are committed to maintaining a free market- place of ideas where the exchange of thoughts is not suppressed, regardless of whether they are deemed offensive, unwise, immoral, or disagreeable by some. Only the vigorous debate on all ideas can lead to informed judgments and, consequently, true progress.
The affiliations of the signatories below are listed for identification only and do not imply endorsement by the institution. The names appear in the approximate order in which they signed.
If you want to sign this letter, send an email to againstcensorship2024@proton.me
Luciano de Castro, Professor, University of Iowa
Joshua Rauh, Professor, Stanford University
Harald Uhlig, Professor, University of Chicago
Iván Marinovic, Professor, Stanford University
Zachary Patterson, Professor, Concordia University
Daniel Bonevac, Professor, University of Texas at Austin
Carlos Carvalho, Professor, University of Texas at Austin
Rodrigo Peñaloza, Universidade de Brasília
Gad Saad, Concordia University and Northwood University
Adam Kolasinski, Professor, Texas A&M University
Vernon Smith, Professor, Chapman University, Nobel Prize in Economics
Scott Yenor, Professor, Boise State University
Todd Zywicki, Professor, Scalia School of Law, George Mason University
Sergiu Klainerman, Professor, Princeton University
Antonio Galvao, Professor, Michigan State University
Rabah Amir, Professor, University of Iowa
Luiz Lima, Professor, University of Tennessee
Wilfred Reilly, Professor, Kentucky State University
Bryan Caplan, Professor, George Mason University
William Harper, Professor, Princeton University
Richard Lindzen, Professor, Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT)
Cesar Martinelli, Professor, George Mason University
Dorian Abbot, Professor, University of Chicago
Pedro Domingos, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
Nabil Al-Najjar, Professor, Northwestern University
Alvaro Sandroni, Professor, Northwestern University
Nicholas Hallman, Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin
Glenn Ricketts, National Association of Scholars
Daniel Klein, Professor, George Mason University
Joshua Hendrickson, Professor, University of Mississippi
Roger Koppl, Professor, Syracuse University
Mario Rizzo, Professor, New York University
Donald Boudreaux, Professor, George Mason University
Vincent Geloso, Assistant Professor, George Mason University
David Henderson, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution at Stanford University Nicholas Yannelis, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Thomas Rustici, Associate Professor, George Mason University
A suggestion for future letters of this sort: do not use "democracy" to describe what we are defending. Democracy is a method of choosing a government or making laws in which the people vote. What we are defending here is freedom, particularly freedom of speech. What Brazil (and so many others) are doing would be equally objectionable even if the list of the censored did not include political opponents of the current government. Much of the censorship of recent years has involved ideas that are not even political, even though they impact politics. The censorship of various dissenting views on the COVID-19 virus and pandemic is the classic example.
We have come to use the term "democracy" to mean "our form of government," and in recent years perverted it into "the government I prefer." As a conservative retired lawyer who spent most of his adult life bemoaning the role of the judiciary in overturning the results of the democratic process, I cringe when conservatives criticize Congressional Democrats as being "anti-democratic" for trying to reign in the Supreme Court. What the Democrats are doing would make our system more democratic, not less, although that doesn't necessarily make it right. It would probably make our society less free. I have the same reaction when liberals argue that the Israeli government's initiatives to reign in its out-of-control Supreme Court are "anti-democratic." Those initiatives are pro-democratic using the dictionary definition of democracy. They are only "anti-democratic" using the current distorted definition we have taken to using in recent years (i.e., "the government I prefer").
Language matters. One of the "superpowers" that has enabled Progressives to dominate our culture and politics is their ability to manipulate the meaning of words to advance their agenda. To fight back effectively, conservatives need to use words correctly, and point out when progressives try to manipulate their meaning. The issue in Brazil (and more generally with censorship in Western society) is freedom.
The short sightedness of Acemoglu and Piketty is rather curious. At some point, they might be censored in an authoritarian regime as well. Ellsworth Toohey acolytes?