For those who don’t know (and I didn’t), Alex Jones is some conspiracy theory fanatic with a podcast. If you’re curious, you can read on Wikipedia about … let’s call it, “controversial”, things he claimed. What is noteworthy is that in the last few weeks, he’s been banned from every major social network on the planet.

The banning naturally sparked a long debate about freedom of speech versus advancing nonsense.

On the one hand, we wonder how a platform like Twitter allowed this guy to spread this trash about vaccines and the Sandy Hook shooting. It’s hard enough to tell what’s true and what’s an alternative fact. The last thing we need is more BS floating around inspiring the feeble minded.

On the other hand, if you live in a free country, you are generally entitled to the freedom of speech. In the case of the United States, it turns out to be the very first amendment.

The issue of free speech versus talking trash has been debated for decades yet there is no consensus. It usually goes along the same lines. One party claims some speech is offensive. They suffered psychological harm and will report it to the authorities once they get out of their safe spaces. The other party tells them to stick their noses somewhere else since it’s a protected right to say what you want.

I remember one such incident from a few months back with Nina, Bob, and Michael. We were arguing if Twitter should scrap anonymity on it’s platform and make it mandatory to be verified. Bob and Nina supported mandatory verification. The idea was that people who hide behind anonymity are far more likely to troll on Twitter. This leads to a very toxic environment.

Michael and I argued that this hampers free speech. Yes, you still technically can say anything you want on Twitter. But when your name is tied to it, you won’t.

But that got me thinking:

What’s so good about free speech anyway? Why is that an end goal in itself?

Turns out, the internet has answered that question already in a beautifully crafted YouTube clip. However, instead of linking to it, I think I’ll summarize the interesting parts here.

In the clip, the presenter notes four reasons for defending the freedom of speech:

Freedom of speech is fundamentally necessary if you plan to oppose it. I found this idea to be uniquely intriguing and convincing. Allow me to explain.

Imagine you’d like to advocate for the restriction of free speech. You go on stage in the middle of a busy intersection, and right before you’re about to yell into the mic, a couple of thugs grab you by the throat and drag you down.

What happened? A society where speech is restricted can choose to restrict your speech as well — Including your advocacy to the restriction of speech. Thus; you end up in a weird conundrum. To ensure the ability to advocate for the restriction of speech, you must have freedom of speech. Oh the irony.

Freedom of speech is important to share ideas. This is the most common argument I hear for defending the freedom of speech. There are plenty of examples in history when people were wrong. The only way we were able to correct ourselves is by allowing people who figured it out to share their solutions.

Freedom of speech is important to a free and democratic society. The presenter explains how a totalitarian system of leadership in a country cannot exist with freedom of speech. The reason is that if someone decides to rise up against the leader, the leader will certainly deal with them through their preferred means — be it prison or execution. However, no leader can deal with the entire population rising up. This can happen only with a sufficient amount of free speech. This is also why most authoritarian countries go above and beyond to suppress the flow of ideas.

Freedom of speech allows to resolve conflicts and come to consensus through discussions instead of prejudice and ignorance. We cherish open communication in universities, workplaces, between friends and family, between countries, between people of different background, between people of differing political ideologies and so on for a reason. Through open communication, we are able to resolve conflicts that would otherwise escalate to violence, divorces, wars and spoiled children.