The rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, sent an Instagram post Friday suggesting fellow musician Sean “Diddy” Combswas controlled by Jewish people — a common antisemitic trope. Within hours, Instagram had removed the post and locked his account.
That sent Ye to Twitter, where he was publicly welcomed back by Elon Musk, who may soon take ownership of the company. Within hours, however, Ye had posted a separate antisemitic tweet that he would go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” Twitter, like Instagram, was quick to block the post and lock his account.
But a conservative-led movement to rein in what some see as “censorship” by Silicon Valley giants is poised to alter how they approach such decisions. Between a growing field of state laws that seek to restrict content moderation and Elon Musk’s determination to loosen Twitter’s policies, posts such as Ye’s could soon become more prevalent online.
A law passed by Texas last year, which could become a model for other Republican-led states if upheld by the courts, prohibits large online platforms from censoring users or limiting their posts based on the political views they express. Legal experts told The Washington Post that such laws would make it much riskier for social media companies such as Meta, which owns Instagram, and Twitter to moderate even blatantly antisemitic posts such as Ye’s.
And Musk has said that one of his goals for Twitter, should he complete a $44 billion deal to purchase the company and take it private, is to provide a forum for legal speech of all kinds.“If the citizens want something banned, then pass a law to do so, otherwise it should be allowed,” he tweeted in May.
By that standard, Ye’s tweet would likely stand, at least in the United States, where hate speech is not against the law. “It’s a vile tweet, but there’s no question it’s protected by the First Amendment,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute.