(Daily Wire) The topic of free speech loomed large in a Twitter conversation on Monday featuring Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the scion of American political royalty, longtime liberal activist, and upstart Democratic presidential candidate.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk invited Kennedy, who some polls show has as much as 20% support among Democrats in his bid to wrest the 2024 nomination away from President Joe Biden, to appear in the second Twitter Spaces conversation featuring a 2024 White House contender after one late last month with Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. Kennedy praised Musk, telling him that Twitter under his leadership has fought against “censorship” on the platform.
“I think if we don’t protect free speech at all costs, we don’t have a functioning democracy,” Kennedy said.
No stranger to being silenced on social media, Instagram bannedKennedy over his posts raising concerns about the safety of COVID vaccines more than two years ago. Just this past weekend, Instagram restored his account, with parent company Meta saying it allowed the return because Kennedy is an active presidential candidate.
The turnaround is a late decision, however, as Kennedy filed to run for president two months ago. And he’s no fringe candidate, either. Polls consistently show he has double-digit support, right up to about 20%, in the contest for the Democratic Party’s nomination.
Fighting against censorship is a costly battle, even for the social media platforms themselves, as Musk attested during his conversation with Kennedy. Talking about losing the support of advertisers, Musk said Twitter has lost half its revenue “simply because we insist on free speech.”
After Musk completed a $44 billion takeover of Twitter last fall, he championed “The Twitter Files,” a project which has given the public an unprecedented look into the decision-making process behind content moderation. Among other changes made to Twitter, Musk has overseen the restoration of banished accounts, including the one belonging to former President Donald Trump.
Both Musk and Kennedy seemed to agree that democracy cannot succeed when speech and the flow of information are bogged down by restraints.
“There’s never been a time in history when we look back and say that the people who are censoring free speech were the good guys,” Kennedy said. “They’re always the bad guys. It’s always the first step toward totalitarianism.”
Kennedy, who touted himself as “pretty much a free-speech absolutist,” argued that “the remedy for bad speech is more speech.”
Kennedy praised Musk for his release of the “Twitter Files. “I can’t imagine any attorney for Twitter told you that was a good idea,” Kennedy said. “I was so surprised and delighted when you did that on your own.”
