US law always seemed strange to me but why is discussions around violence and murder not covered under free speech? The countries that take free speech seriously allow you to freely speak about anything, as long as you don't break the law (inciting violence for example). Seems strange US would be so far behind on this but still see themselves as last bastion of free speech.
Well, free speech through the First Amendment of our Constitution is only protected from interference from the government. Nothing is protected about private platforms. Google is free to implement whatever policies they want. Thus the point is kind of moot because this isn’t the government interfering with free speech at all.
If it were though, I think it would indeed be a tricky can of worms. Some aspects of “talking” about criminal activity are considered illegal: for example, Conspiracy to Commit Offense [1] makes it illegal to conspire to do criminal activity.
Freedom of Speech was really meant to protect people from being able to criticize the government without fear of being disappeared. Great article on the history of that clause here [2].
The US had freedom of speech encoded into the law in 1791. To this day I believe Australia has no explicit freedom of speech law. I am not a history buff but I suspect U.S. was in fact at one point ahead of the curve.
I believe there is an ebb and flow to fear and control exercised over speech, whether it be fear that the speech is dangerous or just objectionable in moral systems (violence, obscenity, etc.)
Some day we’ll probably be back at the other end, where the scrutiny is primarily aimed at what is disallowed rather than allowed. But, I think new media and their impact on society is always scary. It happened with books, radio, movies, TV, video games and it’s happening with social media and the internet. And with how well conspiracies and misinformation spreads online, it’s easy to see where the fear comes from. It is causing people who believe in the truth to prevail to begin to question themselves.
Exactly what is covered by the first amendment is very wishy-washy and US law is intentionally elastic, so there are probably some blurred lines as to what kinds of violent threats may cause something to no longer be considered protected speech.
My understanding is that what is not covered under free speech in the US are not "discussions around" violence and murder but actual "true threats" and calls to "imminent lawless action". Not quite the same.
I've been on these platforms before the riot and I've seen a lot of unmoderated criminal activity.