Video Marketing and The Freedom of Speech
Why is the freedom of speech so important for video marketers to have success? I’m going to give you the complete run-down. You can’t be a video creator, video marketer, YouTuber, educator, or influencer without deeply supporting the freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Understanding this right will increase your chances of success as you seek to share your message with the world through video.
Today, I’m not presenting my argument through the lens of any political party, because this issue should not belong to a single party, not on the left or the right. These freedoms to express your opinions freely and share information that you believe is true, is a basic human right. There should not be any argument about this, but unfortunately, there is. More and more people want information and opinions that they disagree with to be censored. What if the table turned on them? They wouldn’t be so happy.
Not all governments recognize this right because then they relinquish control. Just because a government elsewhere in the world doesn’t protect this right does not mean it’s not a right for every single human being. In the USA, we’re lucky enough to have a written constitution that protects this right, but the constitution did not invent this right. The right to free speech predates the government. It is a natural right that we deserve as human beings, regardless of whether law recognizes it or not. And every other freedom follows this one. And I know what you may be thinking, “freedom of speech only applies to government, not private companies.” Don’t worry, we will address that. Because in the context of content marketing, you are relying on private companies to recognize this principle, which they don’t legally have to uphold.
Freedom of speech court cases have surfaced in the filmmaking industry, probably more than anywhere else, because the mode of expression is in a visual and audio form, not just text. This makes it more persuasive and provocative. It’s also easier to present evidence for your argument when you have visuals. So of course, enemies of the first amendment (freedom of speech) have attacked video production more than anything else.
I’m exercising my right of speech through this video. I cannot declare that everything I say is 100% true because I’m not God, but I believe that my opinions on this matter are true. And you have the right to disagree and think differently.
Your ability to produce videos to grow your business relies on three elements within the first amendment:
The Freedom of Religion (which doesn’t just include joining a church of your choice, it encompasses the right to believe whatever you want, to create your own belief system and then practice those beliefs.)
The freedom of speech (includes your right to express yourself through your verbal voice but also any other form. It comes hand in hand with the next one, especially in our modern day…)
The freedom of the press. (Sharing information factual or opinion in some published form. This used to only mean print, now it means video, audio, virtual reality, digital print and traditional print. People usually tie this one to just news outlets, but any Youtuber who is expressing their view on something is doing it under freedom of the press.)
There is only ONE restrictive condition for these three rights: your freedom of practicing a religion, or your beliefs and exercising speech and freedom of the press cannot infringe upon someone else’s rights for those same things, or any other rights protected in the constitution like the right to life and property. In short, you can go out in the streets and express your opinions as long as you don’t physically hurt someone or you don’t incite immediate violence like saying, “Let’s go burn this building down!” That is a direct threat of violence and is not protected.
Hurting someone’s emotions is too subjective, and thus, it doesn’t count. Hate speech is actually protected as long as you are not threatening violence. You can criticize someone and not get in trouble for it. You might say something that hurts someone’s feelings, then say the same thing to someone else, but it doesn’t hurt their feelings. Whereas if you punch someone in the face, it’ll hurt regardless of who you are, unless you’re Rocky Balboa. He can take the hit.
This is where things get murky because many cases recently where institutions or governments try to censor free speech in the form of movies or video happen because they are making the argument that the speech is offensive. They can’t protect someone else’s feelings. That person does not have to listen to the person speaking that is offending them. They can choose to turn off the video, or not read the blog post. Now, many will argue that many of these censoring issues are occurring on social media sites owned by private companies and so the censoring is legal. And it is legal for private companies to censor whatever they want. The right only refers to governments censoring the speech but we’ll discuss this more in a bit because this becomes a big issue when private companies own a monopoly on the public square within the internet.
Whereas someone trespassing on your property and damaging your house is a different story. You couldn’t opt out of that burglar hurting you and your property, you couldn’t just turn it off. They forced their way into your space.
Now there are some forms of content that I agree should be censored (still not by the government) or at least labelled and gated. I do believe in creators being transparent about the nature of what is in their video so people can make an informed decision, especially so parents can protect their children from certain content. Obscenity is something that has been held up in the courts to not be protected under free speech. Pornography or glorified violence is an example of obscenity when not expressed through artistic means. If the perceivably obscene content does not present any sort of artistic, literary or scientific value then it’s not protected. The MPAA movie rating system was one way that Hollywood found a way to keep producing what some people considered obscene content but label it so parents could make a choice as to whether they felt okay about their children watching it, or make a choice for themselves so they don’t accidentally subject themselves to content they don’t want to be exposed to. And most of the time, many movies provided artistic value, sometimes not.
My clients pay me to help them get their message out to the world through educational videos that help solve people’s problems, and they use these videos to build an audience on YouTube and elsewhere. And then they use video to convert that audience into customers so they can produce products and services that better the world. I help them with their video content marketing strategy, which specifically refers to video content that has value in and of itself. I’m not talking about commercials or ads. Those types of videos don’t offer inherent value, the value only comes from the product it is advertising. Video content marketing produces videos that offer education or entertainment or inspiration so that the viewer can experience benefits from simply watching the video and applying what it teaches them.
And I’ve helped influencers who have one opinion on a subject, let’s take health and wellness for example, and I’ve helped another influencer with a very different opinion and different set of data on that same subject and both had the right to express their perspective.
For those types of videos to work, the internet must remain a free and open space for creators to express their message without censorship. It doesn’t matter if someone disagrees, or even if the majority of people disagree with the creator’s message. Most people disagreed with Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher who suggested the Earth was round. It’s extremely important to realize that the majority opinion is not always right, and that’s why censorship based on silencing minority opinions or the majority is extremely dangerous.
ALL opinions, perspectives, viewpoints, and information must be allowed to circulate freely. That’s different than speech that is inciting immediate violence or obscene. Expressing your opinions on topics and passing along information you believe to be true is not inciting violence nor obscene.
When influencers express their opinions on certain topics and share their expertise, that relies on freedom of religion, the press and freedom of speech. It’s up to the viewer or the reader to decide if they believe something is true. No government should ever make that decision for the viewer. Nor should any company. And here’s where the debate gets murky.
Many major social media companies (who control most of today’s information flow) defend their right to censor content by saying, “The freedom of speech only prevents the government from blocking certain speech, but not companies.” That is technically true, companies do have a right to decide what type of content is allowed on their platforms, but if the first amendment is based on a natural God-given human right that predates the constitution, then shouldn’t all institutions honor that, including private companies? Even though they are not legally compelled to protect free speech, it is the right thing to do. And it’s our job as customers of these companies to speak up and demand that they uphold our natural rights, even if they are not legally bound. And it’s especially important when you only have a couple of companies controlling all of the information on the internet. These monopolies have the power of governments and thus should be upheld to the same standard of protecting free speech.
Now let’s discuss one of the biggest threats to video marketing/freedom of speech: “fact checking” and “misinformation campaigns.” Misinformation is a code word for, “silence people I don’t agree with.” Anything that doesn’t align with someones beliefs is now labelled as misinformation. Once social media companies started to adopt the tradition of tv news outlets with “fact checking” and stopping “misinformation,” they crossed the line. Sharing information that one believes is true but is actually false is protected under the freedom of speech.
Depending on which side of the political aisle you sit on, you tend to have different information and different facts, which makes it very confusing. What is a fact to one person isn’t to another. And they each reference different contradictory studies and data. This is supposed to inspired healthy debate. The best ideas win. A company like Facebook or YouTube does not have the power of God to be able to decide what is a fact or what is or is not misinformation. All they do is use third party companies who often have political bias to verify certain information through the lens of those biases. Then certain video content and other content is deleted, demonetized, blocked, or labelled because it is determined by the social media gods that the information is not factual.
And numerous times, stories that social media sites labelled as false ended up being true and then they changed their tune. The point is, it doesn’t matter whether the information someone shares is factual or not. It is the viewer or reader’s responsibility to do their own “fact checking” by researching multiple sources and ultimately listening to their conscience on whether something is true. The freedom to believe what you want is protected under the freedom of religion. You have the right to create your own set of beliefs regardless of whether they are true or not, as long as those beliefs aren’t infringing upon someone else’s rights.
These companies have expanded their definition of what is harmful way too broadly. Now they can deem a certain political belief or religious belief as harmful even if there is nothing about it that directly threatens someone’s life. They end up fabricating a long thread of indirect cause and effect scenarios to show how someone’s opinion can eventually lead to someone getting hurt. That is too inconclusive and only violent acts that are a direct and IMMEDIATE result of someone’s speech justifies that person’s speech being silenced. They can censor certain health information that doesn’t fit with their opinions, even if that health information is true and good. They can censor videos and blog posts like this that are calling them out for taking censorship too far. When they have a little bit of power to censor on idea, it doesn’t stop. YouTube has updated their content policies more times than I can count. Interesting how it keeps changing even though free speech has consistently only had a couple of exclusions.
It’s getting to the point where you can hardly be critical of anything without being censored because it gets categorized as hate speech, even if you aren’t hateful at all towards certain people, you’re just expressing an opinion on certain behavior or making observations. Expressing hate towards certain groups of people is wrong (but protected under free speech), but it’s also wrong to broadly define hate speech as anything that offends someone. People can get offended for a whole host of reasons that have to do with their sensitivity on a subject, even if the person expressing their views meant no harm and had no hate in their heart.
YouTube is a platform that heavily relies on video creators who have a desire to upload their videos to YouTube to provide value to their audience. And if they feel like they can’t express their voice because the platform might disagree with them politically or ideologically, then they won’t use that platform. In the last year, we’ve already seen many other platforms start to pop up to compete with these monopolies that have a more moderate and limited approach to censorship.
Another problem with using the excuse of “private companies don’t have to abide by the constitution” is because of something called “crony capitalism.” That is when the government partners with large corporations to cause change without having to go through the legislative process. Large companies donate money to specific politicians and campaigns, spending enormous amounts of money lobbying on capitol hill for legislation that protects their monopolies, and meeting with government officials to discuss how they can work together. The government is very interested in all the information that these tech giants have on people. There is mutual interest in them partnering. So, the government passes regulations that hurt small businesses so that alternatives to these social media and tech giants have a really hard time surviving. We won’t get too much into the details of this, but the point is, sometimes the government will overstep the constitution by working behind the scenes by partnering with private businesses behind the curtain, which is a very sneaky way of squashing our first amendment right without being liable for it and without doing it directly.
And then our lives are being affected by CEOs who are acting as politicians, and they are people we never voted for. And then we blame capitalism for the corruption. No, it’s government-corporate partnerships that are to blame, which is NOT capitalism. This is not the free market’s fault. Free markets regulate themselves. Content marketing depends on free markets surviving. Countries that don’t protect the free market and free speech don’t have much content marketing going on. Only what the government decides is worth publishing gets seen. So don’t let your country get there.
So that’s why we must demand that companies uphold the freedom of speech because if they don’t, they may violate basic human rights because of their own political interests.
You don’t combat the opinions you don’t like by silencing them, you combat other ideas with your ideas, with your beliefs. You just get out there and express your beliefs. Stop complaining that someone else is expressing something you don’t like.
So, if you have beliefs you want to share and there are other people sharing beliefs you disagree with, stop complaining that the other person has the right to put a video up on YouTube. Turn on the camera on your phone and make a video yourself on what YOU believe. Freedom of speech is for EVERYONE. And as a video creator and video marketer, you would do good to support it and speak up when it’s being attacked, even if it’s the other side of the political aisle that is being silenced. Because at a moment’s notice, they could silence you if the agenda changes. So, you should be concerned anytime you see speech being silenced, regardless of whether you believe in that person’s opinions or not.
Well, now you know why as a video marketer, you must the support freedom of speech for everyone. Otherwise, your right to make videos expressing your perspective could be taken away.