Elon Musk says that Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square, and he seems likely to push for a reduction in controls on speech on Twitter. Jaigris Hodson, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Canada Research Chair in Digital Communication for the Public Interest at Royal Roads University, says that while this might seem like a way to ensure free speech in theory, in practice, it would actually serve to suppress the speech of Twitter’s most vulnerable users.
Today, in the first conversation in an occasional series on social media and free speech, we’ll ask Professor Hodson why she thinks speech on Twitter needs more moderation not less.
Later in the program we’ll revisit a conversation from 2021 with reporter Eli Saslow: His book, Rising Out of Hatred, tells the story of Derek Black, who started as a leading light in the white nationalist movement and then underwent a remarkable transformation.
