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Authored by Matt Lamb via TheCollegeFix.com,

A Columbia University journalism fellow said Elon Musk’s support for free speech on X, formerly known as Twitter, is both “immoral” and “dangerous.”

Anika Navaroli used to work on Twitter’s “Trust and Safety Team,” the unit within the company that censored information, oftentimes true. Musk eliminated the team. She now is a senior fellow at Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism.

She praised workers like herself for “thanklessly” working behind the scenes to defend “institutions.”

Navoli and her co-workers, in her telling, “were one of the last defenses to American democracy leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021 mob attack on Congress” which “led ultimately to our deplatforming former President Donald Trump.”

She wrote:

The journalism fellow said speech is “evolving,” “complicated,” and “sticky.”

“It requires tradeoffs, flexibility, and tough decisions. It shouldn’t be dictated by an autocratic CEO with absolutist ideologies,” Navoli wrote, repeating prior statements she has made on the subject.

She is correct in that our conceptions of speech are complicated – I do not think there is some broad First Amendment right for the authors of pornographic books targeting kids to have their works in libraries.

Nor are men cross-dressing and scandalizing kids equal to the concerned parent speaking out at a school board meeting about sexualized curriculum  in terms of the First Amendment. (Neither does the Biden administration, which favors the former but not the latter).

But I don’t think it is “complicated” that there was true and verified information about Hunter Biden’s laptop that the Twitter team censored.

Navoli’s fears are just the latest that began more than a year ago, prior to Musk’s completion of his purchase of the platform in October 2022.

For example, a Vanderbilt law professor said the purchase was “deeply troubling.”

University of California Berkeley Professor Robert Reich also believes Musk’s support for open debate on social media is a threat to “democracy,” calling it “the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth.”

X is still plagued with throttling problems, as The College Fix has seen. But overall the platform has improved and truthful speech (i.e. on gender) is better respected.

That is a good thing and not complicated at all.