Frank LoMonte Comments Regulating Speech on Social Media

Frank LoMonte, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications Brechner Center for Freedom of Information director, was quoted in Sean O’Conner’s Public Comment column in The College Voice, Mercer County Community College’s student newspaper, on Dec. 11.

In the column, O’Conner focuses on how regulating social media posts that propagate hate, also known as “fighting words,” would violate the First Amendment. These “fighting words,” are defined as those which, by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.

According to LoMonte, “If you just post the words ‘kill Jews’ to Twitter, that’s a horrible thing to say but I doubt that it crosses the line into an act of unlawful incitement, because nobody realistically expects Twitter readers to say, ‘I wasn’t planning to do any violence to anyone, but now that I’ve read these two words, I guess I will.’”

Posted: December 18, 2017
Category: College News
Tagged as: Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, Frank LoMonte, The College Voice