@ The Bitcoin Community Newsletter

Author: Taryn Christiansen @ DoraHacks

Abstract

This article discusses the Fifth Estate and how Elon Musk’s ideas about free speech will affect crypto and the potential for network states if the Trump administration enters office.

Over the past decade, legacy media has become increasingly less influential in how people consume information. Besides those who remain obsequious to the two political parties and their respective information engines like CNN and Fox News, people have grown suspicious of any information relayed from those institutions, which is unfortunate. Not because what they distribute as information is, in fact, faithful to the truth and that people are confused, but because these institutions do at times appear to be in service to interests that do not uphold democratic norms and virtues that are necessary for a democracy’s well-being. And the worst part is that they are unwilling to admit it. It’s one thing for a business model to revolve around certain biases geared toward specific outcomes; it is another to do so and act as if one is an exemplar of journalistic integrity and a torch bearer of truth. This kind of hypocritical behavior exacerbates people’s skepticism and often leads to an excess of distrust, resulting in a complete collapse of faith in a country’s institutions. And one thing is certain: trust in one’s institutions and the belief that they act in good faith are essential to democracy. To take a current and relevant example, a complete distrust in the voting process means a democracy’s collapse. If individuals believe that the voting process they participate in is rigged and that the results are misaligned with the truth, with what people envision for the future of their country, democracy will not last long. The people will not identify with those who lead the country; they will see an administration that has unjustly stolen power and who is, therefore, against democracy. Whether or not such distrust is appropriate within the United States today is not the point here. The fact is that people do distrust the voting process, and that’s a problem.

There are institutions, then, that have to be maintained for a democracy to work. Institutions that distribute information is an example of this. Now, one reason for the current distrust in legacy media has been the inception of what is called the Fifth Estate. The notion of an ‘estate’ is derived from what has been historically referred to as the chief sources of power within a state. In the past, European societies were conceived of having three domains of power: the clergy, who controlled the religious institutions that dominated the West for centuries; the aristocracy, who owned land and status; and the people, which consisted of peasants and merchants. After the invention of the printing press, where information could be widely disseminated, and literacy rates amongst the general population grew, the press and news media arose as a fourth estate, which obtained an additional foothold in power within society. These four estates have been the traditional domains of power that control and operate a society’s institutions.

Of course, the degree of power each estate holds in competition with the others has historically shifted. The rise of news media disrupted the hierarchy of power maintained throughout the Middle Ages and up to the Enlightenment, with the Catholic Church having increasingly less influence over society. And the Fifth Estate poses the potential for another shift in power. But what is the Fifth Estate?

The Fifth Estate is made possible by the internet and consists of the prevalence of non-legacy and independent reporters, journalists, and media sources. Podcasts are an excellent example of this, especially the ones that title themselves distributors of information regarding politics, technology, and socio-cultural events. But the archetypal example is social media. On platforms like X and Facebook, communication can be held between anyone, and the power to share and promote one’s opinion is made available to everyone, regardless of whether one has a position of power. The Fifth Estate has decentralized and democratized much of what legacy media was first purposed to do, influencing the growing distrust amongst the people toward their institutions. In the 20th century, the United States committed acts abroad like the Gulf of Tonkin in the Vietnam War, supported coups that removed democratically elected leaders in foreign countries, and the Iran-contra affair, which demonstrated that the United States was not the Western hero across the globe it presented itself as. It was prone to the same corruptive blunders and self-interested behaviors that it accused its enemies of; it was just good at concealing it from the public. However, as technology advanced and power became redistributed by the internet, these kinds of occurrences, which previously were not common knowledge, came to the forefront of American consciousness. America could no longer maintain its moral mythos, and a great disillusionment occurred.

While this kind of transparency provided by the Fifth Estate is generally good because, presumptively, the truth is good, its decentralized and open-access nature can also cause problems. The other estates possess a more robust institutional infrastructure and are easier to regulate and hold responsible when they err. However, in the case of social media, how to regulate this space is more nuanced due to its unprecedented nature. For instance, people have a First Amendment right to free speech in the United States, so deplatforming those who may share bad or false information on these platforms, at least prima facie, violates their rights. On the other hand, as many argue, the First Amendment does not entitle one to promote their false and potentially harmful speech, and therefore, should not be provided a space to express their opinions. But who decides what is good and bad information? The government? The companies that own these platforms? How will it be ensured that everyone acts in good faith and for the best interest of all? Should private companies really have the power to control a platform that has recently become a direct line of communication between the people and their representatives? Or are people capable of differentiating this information for themselves? The questions are endless and complicated and involve interminable controversy because of the diverse viewpoints within the country. Left-leaning folks tend to want safer, more regulated platforms for speech. People who lean more right on the issue tend to argue for a marketplace of ideas, where better speech will out-compete the worse. And there are many more opinions in between.

Although the diversity of opinion within these novel issues is not bad in itself but can typically be good, the fall of legacy media can aggravate the degree of separation between the various sides of a given issue, leading to an excess of unshared presuppositions. Suppose no institution helps shape a shared perspective. In that case, there are less common and continuous assumptions that people view the world through and use to resolve and make compromises in collective decision-making. It becomes a network with increasingly discontinuous nodes, which are then unable to feedback to one another due to the loss of direct communication and the need to relate by more remote and irrelevant pathways. This slowly shuts off one’s ability to understand and sympathize with another person’s unfamiliar beliefs. That’s not to say it’s better to have one institution over a plurality within one domain, but having one that provides a foundation within a domain, one that’s general but cohesive enough to facilitate civil discourse on disagreements, is helpful. So, although legacy media certainly doesn’t fulfill this role anymore, if it ever did, something that would help deal with the excess of diversity within podcasts, journalism, and news media is beneficial for a collective. There needs to be a healthy balance between the two.

Whatever the best and most rational solutions to these problems are, the upcoming election presents a potential route some of these may go. Former president Donald Trump has recently gained the support of Elon Musk, and, as is widely known, Musk claims to be both a free-speech absolutist and a strong advocate of deregulation. With Trump publicly expressing that he will give Musk a role in his administration, it stands to reason that Musk’s views will have an impact on policy and may potentially influence what role the Fifth Estate plays in society, especially regarding social media, being that he is the majority shareholder of X. With a hand in both government and the Fifth Estate, his political ideas will likely be pivotal in how the United States’ future unfolds if the Trump administration enters into office. The rest of the article will be concerned with locating some potentialities that may arise from this. The first is that, since Trump has espoused a pro-crypto view, and because Musk and Trump are both for deregulation, it seems likely that if Gary Gensler decides, or is forced, to step down from the SEC chair, there may be inroads toward some crypto endeavors being seen as a matter of free speech due to ‘code is speech’ precedent. The second is that, if this is the case, some of the motivation regarding network states may be lost, and pursuing this project can become less pertinent in terms of its initial goals, like technological advancement in a more unregulated space.

Musk bought Twitter in 2022 because he believed it to be a stand for free speech, which he saw as under threat due to what he often refers to as the ‘woke mind virus.’ Whatever the specific political beliefs this virus supposedly holds, Musk sees it as silencing opposing views by enforcing certain social virtues that should outweigh considerations of free discussion, speech, and inquiry. In short, he believes this virus is a potential threat to truth, which perhaps should be the principal value of a free, democratic, liberal society. With the publication of the Twitter files, there is compiling evidence that the government pressured social media platforms to adhere to a set of ideological standards during the 2016 election and the pandemic that amounted to the de-platforming of individuals, the suppression of dissenting opinions, and, ultimately, governmental control of these novel information sources. By purchasing Twitter, Musk’s purported aim is to establish a public town square for a free exchange of ideas that is decentralized and impervious to control by the state. This expresses Musk’s belief in less regulation, especially regarding matters of free speech.

Now, because Musk is a controversial figure, many have an immediate suspicion about his claims. However, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, shares similar concerns. It is simply a fact that government sectors attempted to interfere with and regulate social media. Dorsey has expressed his worries about this, saying that social media should resist centralized control. Whether Musk or Dorsey are correct, the question of if and how social media should be regulated is something society has to wrestle with, and their opinions have good reasons to support their positions. But others have good reasons for their positions, too. People like Sam Harris and Jonathan Haidt are examples of opposing views on this. Harris says in a podcast, "I think social media has been the technology that has deranged us ... We have effectively been enrolled in a psychological experiment to which no one gave consent ... It's just been terrible. I just think it's been bad for society in almost every respect." Harris and Haidt may not necessarily advocate for direct governmental intervention in social media, but they certainly don’t hold the town square view like Musk. They believe social media produces too few beneficial consequences for it to be held in such high esteem. Whatever the solution is, real proposals to this problem will be pivotal in how the future plays out.

Before discussing how Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration may affect crypto in light of what has been stated above, as well as how this impacts the standing of network states, it’s important to flag the more philosophical nature of this question by distinguishing between a moral argument for free speech, and a legal one. Whereas a legal claim about free speech expresses a descriptive argument, which amounts to saying that, according to a system of laws that is comprised of specific legal facts, other facts follow, a moral claim about free speech says something about how free speech should be implemented within a society, which is normative. In other words, a moral claim not only says that certain facts about free speech exist, where those facts can be either socially constructed or be part of some natural order, but also that those facts are good and that society should adhere to, and its members' action should be guided by, those facts about free speech. That is, a moral claim provides further, more robust reasons that extend outside of the law for what a society should do about free speech, which also points to certain ends expressed by the underlying principles that inform the claim being made. It’s important to distinguish these two ways free speech can be justified because conflating them produces confusion that tends to cause people to talk past one another in discussions about free speech, which obstructs potential progress in how people conceive of technological progress and the actual progress itself.

So, regarding morality, what principle(s) justifies Musk’s position on this issue? For instance, does he mean absolute free speech will produce the best consequences within society, or for individuals? Or does he mean that absolute free speech respects people’s fundamental rights, independent of the consequences? A lasting contribution to the former approach comes from John Stuart Mill, who believed that free speech is the best way to get nearer to the truth by individuals challenging one another’s opinions and beliefs, which will also psychologically revitalize truth in the minds of those within the society. Free speech promotes a lively and truth-seeking population. While he believed in a limit to free speech, such as a prohibition on outright calls to violence - and I assume Musk does as well, otherwise his position is somewhat untenable in a liberal democracy - Mill did believe that both of these produced highly valuable consequences. By constant exposure to a diversity of thought and evidence for differing opinions; by not being able to take one’s views for granted, and by having to reconsider one’s position because other members of society are free to express their disagreements, the best consequences for society may be produced. A contemporary and famous proponent of this today is Joe Rogan, who has reaffirmed his position in many of his podcasts, saying that bad speech, which means speech that spreads false information, should be beaten by better speech that is aligned with truth. The state and society should not regulate speech but properly promote it by allowing individuals to express themselves freely.

But there are objections to this. Does a perpetual heightening of the quantity of speech mean that truth will somehow reveal itself? Doesn’t quality also matter, which means there should be mechanisms at play that promote ideal civil norms in rational discourse, ones that delegitimize some forms of speech? Or, more fundamentally, what is our relationship to the truth, and does absolute free speech actually present a route to it? Maybe, but it’s not obvious. Because the principle under discussion concerns consequences, an objection that claims worse consequences will ensue is a creditable counter. And if a society implements absolute free speech, whatever that precisely means, and it results in a complete distrust of one’s democratic institutions, and the society collapses, it’s not clear that free speech was actually a good in service to the group; it led to its demise.

On the other hand, Musk may mean something like rights rather than consequences. It is a fundamental right of human beings, one that respects their basic and deserved dignity, to be able to speak freely and publicly without governmental suppression. Again, this is plausible. But how far does one’s right to free speech go? Are there other rights that may outweigh it under certain conditions? These are complicated questions, and the aim is not to propose definite answers but to cast light on what may be meant when the First Amendment, and free speech more generally, is invoked because justifications about its applications can be unclear. For example, if Musk's definition of free speech merely refers to the Constitution and the First Amendment, then his claim is merely legal and not moral. This would be perfectly legitimate, and in regard to claiming free speech is a justification for crypto, this would amount to saying that the First Amendment protections extend to the technology. But that would also mean his pejorative ‘woke mind virus,’ which, when expressed, tends to have moral undertones, plays no role in any seriously proposed argument for free speech. He would always be making a legal point. But when he speaks about the issue, it seems he’s making the further claim that, as a society, we should adhere to the Constitution, which would suggest reasons for why the document possesses normative value independent of its legal worth. Given his seriousness when discussing these topics, his willingness to spend billions of dollars on a company, his commitment to developing it, and doing so for the sake of a purported principle, it’s safe to think those reasons are moral.

Nevertheless, whether he means explicitly something legal, moral, or both doesn’t necessarily make a difference in whether attempts will be made to lessen or clarify crypto’s regulation. Because Musk and Trump are both advocating for deregulation, and because crypto is often conceived by its communities as technology purposed toward decentralization, and therefore, in principle, lessens the need for governmental regulation, it stands to reason that crypto will be given more space to advance as a technology. And because Musk and Trump are taking a deregulating approach toward crypto, recent articles suggest that the Trump administration may pick Hester Peirce as Gary Gensler’s replacement as SEC chairperson. Given her libertarian leanings and statements about these issues, the First Amendment may substantially affect how crypto will be handled under Trump if she's picked. Sage D. Young writes in an article in January from Unchained that “Pierce finds the idea of government imposing a regime where developers must seek permission to write code ‘terrifying.’” And at an SEC oversight hearing in September, Peirce stated, "[The SEC has] fallen down on our duty as a regulator not to be precise.” Her general position seems to be that it should be up to consumers and developers to ultimately decide crypto’s future, and not regulators, expressing concerns about government stifling innovation and technological advancement.

Whether Peirce is picked or not, it’s clear that the Trump administration is looking for someone with these kinds of policy positions. Other regulatory agencies like the CFTC will also impact this, but as many within the crypto community will celebrate, with Gary Gensler removed, further steps can be taken to develop the technology. And legal precedents like ‘code is speech’ provide a legal avenue to argue that the First Amendment should protect crypto. Peter Van Valkenburgh, the research director at Coin Center, offers an extensive argument for why electronic cash and digital exchange should be protected under free speech laws and why they should also protected under the Fourth Amendment as well.

Interestingly, in that article, Valkenburgh also makes a moral argument that makes the claim that interprets the ends of political rights as autonomy and human dignity, which should be seen as expanding on his legal claims. Whether that further claim is correct or not, he believes there are plenty of legal precedents to argue that crypto is protected under the Constitution, especially if the technology is interpreted as expressing political and social ideas, which makes regulating it appear as suppressing free expression. Of course, there is substantial disagreement about this, and it’s not clear whose right about the issue. However, a Trump administration would make a pro-crypto legal interpretation more likely to obtain.

Now, lastly, in several previous articles posted on the Dora Research Blog, much attention was paid to network states and their development as a theory. Trump’s policy position on crypto affects this as well. It was stated above that an anti-regulatory stance on crypto impacts some of the initial motivation behind network states and, as many of Balaji’s examples of one-commandments for network states in his book would suggest, a Trump administration would address those issues and perhaps satisfy the desire for new states outside of nation-states, causing network states to lose salience. Not entirely, of course, but at least on the technology front. And if so, then it will be interesting to see how the ideas around network states interact with the potential for a more unregulated space in blockchain technology. For instance, one of the aims of network states is to present a one-premise critique of preexisting nation-states that will be used to create a network state. Any critique directed toward the obstruction of technological advancement may be resolved, and efforts can be made toward advancing the technology for preexisting nation-states rather than trying to do so in a new, independent state.