The Deciders

As courts wrestle with speech and privacy rights, tech giants matter the most

By Jeffrey Rosen Monday, June 24, 2013

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    The truth is that those with the most power over who can speak and who can be heard in the Internet age aren't judges or prosecutors or even the President. They're officials at Internet and telecom companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Verizon and AT&T.; Call them the Deciders, in tribute to Nicole Wong, the new White House chief privacy officer and former top lawyer at Twitter and Google, whose Google colleagues bestowed that affectionate nickname on her. They're the ones who decide what controversial speech stays up and what comes down in response to government demands or users' objections. When President Obama called on Google to remove the inflammatory Innocence of Muslims video from YouTube last year, Google initially resisted before blocking access to the video in some countries.

    But as corporate actors, the Deciders aren't bound by the First Amendment, and in other instances they have suppressed speech that the Supreme Court might protect. Facebook, for example, has cracked down on gender-based hate speech under pressure from women's groups and advertisers. And while Internet companies must obey the law, their decisions about whether to cooperate with government surveillance requests will determine the future of free speech as much as any prosecutor or judge. Today's unprecedented centralization of information means that whoever controls the databases holds the real power to decide who can speak and what we can say.

    Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center

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