Stevens rightly argues, “The issue is much simpler: Do you trust Mark Zuckerberg and the other young lords of Silicon Valley to be good stewards of the world’s digital speech? I don’t, but not because conservatives believe (sometimes with good reason) that the Valley is culturally, politically and possibly algorithmically biased against them. As with liberalism in academia, the left-wing tilt in tech may be smug and self-serving, but it doesn’t stop conservatives from getting their messages across. It certainly doesn’t keep Republicans from winning elections. The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of a people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly.”
Indeed, we do know the predominating worldview that governs Silicon Valley. The overlords of the digital world have made that abundantly clear.
But Silicon Valley finds itself engrossed in massive political binds. Two competing worldviews arise in this technological, legal, and moral quandary facing social media giants—namely, the European understanding of free speech as opposed to the American model of free speech.
The European tradition of free speech views the right as conditioned by national interests and governmental power. Thus, a right to free speech is more conditional. In some cases, freedom of speech is merely tolerated. An illustration of this would be criminalizing the refusal to use a person’s preferred gender pronoun. That’s not a hypothetical situation. That is happening in Europe and in Canada.
Those nations, therefore, have exerted pressure on Facebook to clamp down on the types of speech that appear on the platform. Facebook faces a dilemma: either it will comply with European governments and curtail free speech, or the company will face fines, penalties, or even being shut down in those countries.
Meanwhile, the United States presents Facebook with a host of other challenges. Though the nation protects the freedom of speech, will the United States allow Facebook to police themselves, or will the federal government enact legislation to regulate Facebook?
The moral and ethical questions that gravitate around social media are staggering. "
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