Civil rights in an increasingly online society. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Kimberly Adams.

This year's election was one of the most closely watched races in U.S. history, and international observers were watching as well.

On Election Eve, I attended a meeting of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems in Washington, D.C.

Its members are people responsible for running elections and countries all over the world.

There, I sat down with Nadine Fareed Johnson, policy director of the Knight First Amendment

Institute. We talked about how we should understand the right to free speech online, especially

given the current dynamics of the social media landscape. It's important to remember that

the First Amendment actually protects quite a broad

swath of speech, and that can be difficult for folks who really want to see quite a bit of

regulation online. But the truth is that hate speech and other forms of speech are actually

permitted. And we do see a pathway for regulation, but it's really important to recognize that there is quite a broad swath of speech that is protected.

One person's idea of free expression might be somebody else's idea of hate speech.

And one person's idea of controlling misinformation could be somebody else's idea of censorship.

So how do we balance that divide, especially when we're talking about this? So it's actually up to people in some ways.

Because if you think about it from the point of regulation, people say, you know, we really want to

regulate this. We want to avoid misinformation online. We want to regulate

these falsehoods. But the thing is, what the government might say, for example, is that

misinformation they wish to correct might not be what you or I think of misinformation or even

the most dangerous speech, what you or I might think is most dangerous, might not be what a government

regulator thinks is the most dangerous. So we're looking at the public square and all of these

folks who are online, because now this public square is owned by private entities, it's important

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