The Michael Shermer Show

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The New War on Free Speech: Why Power Turns Everyone Into a Censor

May 11, 2026

Guest

Jacob Mchangama

Jacob Mchangama, a free speech scholar and founder of The Future of Free Speech, discusses why speech protections are eroding worldwide. He covers social media’s role, how power tempts censorship, legal limits like incitement, platform moderation and Section 230, hate-speech laws, regulating minors online, and the promise and peril of AI. Short, urgent, and wide-ranging.

01:19:27

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INSIGHT

Platforms Can't Be Pure Free Speech Havens

Private platforms must moderate content to remain viable, so absolute free-speech absolutism fails in practice.
Mchangama notes market pressure, user experience, advertisers, and government jawboning force moderation choices on platforms like X.

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INSIGHT

Audience Capture Radicalizes Creators

Audience capture pushes creators toward extremes as they tailor content to engaged followings.
Mchangama explains founders and influencers often radicalize to satisfy a core demographic, producing extreme rhetoric over time.

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INSIGHT

Section 230 Enables The Modern Internet

Section 230 is crucial for online innovation by shielding platforms from user content liability.
Mchangama warns that without 230, hosting vast user-generated speech would be legally impossible and would stifle digital pioneers.

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Why free speech is facing a global recession

01:31 • 2min

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Human nature and the temptation to censor

03:04 • 6min

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Defining free speech and legal exceptions

08:38 • 2min

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Did Trump's January 6th speech cross legal lines?

10:54 • 2min

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Journalists, trespass, and press protections

Recording protests and holding government accountable

14:07 • 2min

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When protest becomes obstruction

16:19 • 8min

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Private platforms, moderation, and Elon Musk

23:58 • 4min

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Audience capture and radicalization risks

28:20 • 3min

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Section 230's role in online freedom

31:34 • 3min

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Free speech, antisemitism, and university responses

34:50 • 4min

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Hate-speech laws and unintended consequences

38:57 • 2min

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Why minorities benefit from free speech protections

40:53 • 4min

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Safetyism, generational shifts, and free speech

45:19 • 2min

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Regulating minors online and privacy risks

47:46 • 4min

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Protecting kids: parental controls versus regulation

51:44 • 6min

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Social media's educational and maintenance value

58:10 • 4min

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Demographic, cultural explanations for safetyism

01:02:11 • 9min

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AI's double-edged impact on speech

01:10:52 • 4min

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Avoiding preemptive AI censorship

01:15:10 • 3min

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Radical transparency and Taiwan's model

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Free speech was supposed to be the great settled achievement of liberal democracy. Then came social media, cancel culture, campus speech battles, hate-speech laws, authoritarian tech control, and a new era of governments pressuring platforms from every direction.

Michael Shermer speaks with free speech scholar Jacob Mchangama about why speech protections are weakening around the world—not only in dictatorships, but inside democracies. Their conversation moves from the First Amendment and January 6 to hate speech laws in Europe, Section 230, Elon Musk and X, online anonymity, social media bans for minors, and the enormous promise and danger of AI.

Mchangama argues that censorship is less a left-wing or right-wing impulse than a human one: once people gain power, the urge to silence enemies becomes almost irresistible. The real test of free speech is not whether we defend ideas we like, but whether we resist using state power against speech we despise.

Jacob Mchangama is the founder and executive director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. His new book is The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy's Most Essential Freedom.

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