Congratulations to our Winners of the Short-Essay Competition Judged by Columbia Law School Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity

June 18, 2021

Essay Question:

In the past several months we have seen Big Tech (including Facebook, Twitter, and Google) remove individuals from their platforms based on speech content. Some notable examples banned from social media have been Donald Trump, Mike Lindell (the CEO of the My Pillow Company), Alex Jones (a right-wing radio talk show host), and Katie Hopkins (a far-right British commentator). But there have also been apolitical celebrities banned, such as Courtney Love (the American songwriter) for defaming a fashion designer, and Rapper Azealia Banks for posting perceived transphobic content. Interestingly, the Ayatollah Khamenei (the radical Islamic cleric who overthrew the Iranian government in the 1970s and took American hostages) was not banned from Twitter for many years, and was only removed after free-speech defenders challenged the double-standard for internationally decried-oligarchs after Donald Trump’s banning. Here are some questions to keep in mind:

1. Do you think that private companies such as these social media giants have the right to restrict speech on the platforms which they created and developed through their own intellectual property?
2. Or, have these companies become so large and essential in everyday human life, and have been granted so many benefits from the government (like increased publicly-funded electrical power to run their servers), that they themselves have become near-public utilities subject to government regulation? If so, are they therefore, required to provide the constitutional guarantee of free speech to all people on their platforms no matter their political leanings?
3. Are there certain types of speech that should be banned no matter what, on either public or private social media platforms?

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