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Seena Shah is an award-winning communications and marketing strategist and was a parliamentary candidate in the 2019 general election.
“Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.” ― Winston Churchill.
Freedom of speech for some has long been under attack. Whether it’s a university campus or social media network, it has increasingly become a privilege for the woke brigade. Everyone else has slowly been silenced or siloed. This overwhelming accommodation of the easily offended has led to echo chamber utopias where the woke have become accustomed to the comfort of like-minded opinions and the absence of debate.
That is until Elon Musk flew the flag for freedom of expression. In 2024, Elon Musk asserted his vision for X to “[strive] to be the town square of the internet by promoting and protecting freedom of expression.” Waving the flag for all those who felt their identity was under attack and they were fast running out of space to be authentic and free.
Meta decided on no platform Donald Trump and implement an AI fact-checker, selectively hindering freedom of expression according to the woke agenda. However, in a play to make amends with the new President, Mark Zuckerberg reinstated a commitment to return to its roots of promoting free speech. Meta will now move to a X-style “Community Notes” mechanism and its algorithm will loosen its control on political content that appears in newsfeeds.
Regardless of Zuckerberg’s motivations for doing so, his decision to get rid of the AI fact-checker and bring back freedom of speech to Meta should be celebrated. The culmination of both major social networks reversing the erosion of freedom of speech is great news for truly tolerant liberals who believe people should be able to voice their opinions without hinderance.
However, those who reject open and free debate will funnel themselves in droves to other platforms that will protect them from opinions and inconvenient truths that contradict their agenda.
It will come as no surprise to those who followed X’s return to freedom of expression that Meta users are deleting accounts, refusing to post, and moving to boycott the Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp) in protest to this change. Mark Lesley, a Stanford University Law professor, who has been representing Meta in a dispute case, has announced that he will drop Meta as a client and potentially boycott their platforms too.
Without the sanctuary of censorship, the woke brigade will inevitably find somewhere else to express their opinions free from challenge. When X returned to open debate, the Left headed to Bluesky. Meta’s announcement is likely to drive more users to Bluesky but some of Meta’s platforms have become so integral to the way people keep in touch and their sense of community, it’s hard to imagine a life without it. The FOMO (fear of missing out) will keep Left-leaning users on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram but Threads is likely to suffer considerably from a Left exodus.
BlueSky will become a safe space for left-of-centre political discussions. The Left will be free to exercise their woke agenda. Without any real need to join Bluesky, the centrists and Right will remain on the existing platforms and the new echo chambers will be born. The easily offended will carry on safe from major debate and alternative points of view.
With unchecked debate, they will double down and become less tolerant and more extreme in their viewpoints. Understanding will be further eroded and the divide will grow. How long before Bluesky finds an appetite in its user base for censorship? Not long.
Given this type of user typically does not vote Conservative, why should we care? With people spending longer online and digesting more news from social media, this trend is detrimental for society and community cohesion. If the debate goes unchecked and unchallenged, narrow and increasingly extreme points of view will flourish on both sides. The answer is not easy but those who feel strongly about the preservation of freedom of speech should take their voice to Bluesky too.
Conservative politicians and candidates at every level are often slow to adopt new social media platforms, taking Instagram and TikTok as examples. Regardless of political outlook, young people are without a doubt early adopters of new social networks. Over the last decade, some Conservatives have argued that these new social networks are not worth the time because young people do not vote Conservative.
We know this is simply not true. Just look at Canada or the youth support for Reform UK. In readiness for the 2024 General Election, almost every Conservative member of parliament and parliamentary candidate had an Instagram presence and Reform UK has proven otherwise in the case of TikTok. Let’s not make the same mistake with Bluesky.
Left in the hands of the opposition Parties, they have free reign to voice a narrative that suits their agenda. Without any countenance, we are gifting them the next generation of voters. In January, Bluesky reported it had over 26 million users with 3.5 million daily users in the US and UK. This will only grow and we shall ignore it at our peril.
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