On May 27, 1972, comedian George Carlin introduced America to the seven words you can’t say on television. Fifty years later, broadcast TV still bans those same words. But today, nobody cares.
Not because we care less about free speech, but because cable, satellite, and streaming services have practically made those restrictions obsolete.
Carlin used his platform to make a point that wasn’t actually about swearing – it was about the threat that government-mandated gatekeepers pose to free expression. A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) powerful enough to ban those words could potentially ban other ideas too.
Five decades ago, those federal restrictions paired with limited private options to quickly communicate ideas to the masses, particularly a small group of newspapers with national and international reach, meant that a relative handful of government and private gatekeepers had significant influence over public discourse.
Half a century later those FCC restrictions remain and the major outlets are still in business. But innovators have equipped people to bypass the traditional gatekeepers.
In 1972 the FCC could prevent George Carlin from having a voice (if he persisted in using those words). Today the agency still polices broadcast shows, but their censors don’t extend to cable channels, streaming services, online video hosting services, and online platforms.
Social media has made it possible for everyone to say what they think and defend their ideas in writing, through spoken word, or on video. Never has an individual – regardless of their wealth or position – been able to speak so freely and build a global audience for their views. To be sure, the fact that the old gatekeepers at the FCC and legacy media have lost much of their power as technology has provided new options doesn’t mean that free expression is without challenge. But these days, the challenge to free expression comes more from ourselves.
Increasingly, Americans are self-censoring, holding back from sharing their views – not because of threats from the state – but for fear of social or professional risks. About 40 percent of Americans today report self-censorship. This figure is particularly astounding when compared to the 1950s during McCarthyism when only 13 percent of Americans reported self-censorship.
Of course, the social media companies themselves are a new gatekeeper. TikTok has been criticized for censoring content critical of the Chinese government. Twitter made it harder for users to share content on COVID-19 that the platform deemed “false or misleading.” Yet, despite all of this, it remains true that social media and streaming platforms have allowed people who would otherwise have no platform to regularly speak to thousands of followers. Technological change didn’t advance free speech by eliminating gatekeepers but by multiplying them.
Indeed, we ourselves are a kind of gatekeeper now. Twitter and Facebook are free to set and enforce their own policies, and they generally want to create an environment that attracts the most users. This means users’ own preferences for the speech we want to see – and the speech we don’t want to see – affects how the platforms moderate content. And when users join or leave the platforms because of those moderation decisions, the platforms take their cues.
Would be social media regulators on the left and the right, are, perhaps unwittingly, advocating for the days when the FCC and a handful of media outlets determined what everyone heard.
But when viewers get upset by the latest report from Fox News or CNN and demand that the FCC pull their license, they’re living in the past. Fox News and CNN don’t have FCC licenses to be pulled and neither do Netflix, Youtube, Twitter or Facebook.
Technology and innovation have overtaken events. The one-size-fits-all rules of the Depression-era FCC, built for controlling the limited public airwaves in the age of radio and broadcast tv, don’t have the same impact they once did in the age of billions of websites and instantaneous transmission of ideas on social media. Whether on Netflix or Instagram or Snapchat – on the internet there are no government regulators to tell you what you can’t say.
In 2008, Carlin was posthumously honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor by the Kennedy Center. In an absurd irony, because the award ceremony was broadcast on PBS, the seven words were banned from the event.
By then, though, it hardly mattered.
Fifty years on, the regulators still hold the keys. But innovators have opened many more gates. And free speech and the progress it makes possible are the winners.
Casey Mattox – a First Amendment attorney – is senior vice president of legal and judicial strategy at Americans for Prosperity. Neil Chilson is the former chief technologist for the FTC and currently a senior fellow at Stand Together.