Tucker Has A Right to His Twitter Show

Tucker Carlson Web Show

Tucker Carlson who was a host on Fox News and removed his show earlier this year. Tucker has since started broadcasting on Twitter and has drawn at least 169 million views from the first two episodes of his show on the platform. I am not a fan of Tucker, but he seems to be popular.

Twitter has moved into video hosting and the Tucker show is one of the first really popular Twitter 'shows', with its third episode coming out tonight. Part of this popularity could be Elon Musk's posts to his 140 million followers.

It’d be great to have @maddow, @donlemon & others on the left put their shows on this platform. No exclusivity or legal docs required!

You will receive our full support. The digital town square is for all. https://t.co/v1Yse6TQ6u

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 8, 2023

Lawsuit Threat

Axios reported on the threat of a lawsuit by Fox and received a cease-and-desist letter from Fox News as his new series continues to boom on Twitter. Tucker cannot "provide services" to another service, presumably until 2025. The year after the next election.

Fox has a very simple answer to all this. Fire Tucker. Stop paying him. I will not speculate on why Fox continues to pay Tucker, but they do. But until they do, he is under contract to only provide services to Fox News.

What is providing services

Here is where I think, in my opinion, why Fox does not have a solid position from what we have seen. The term providing services. Tucker produces content on the, not unlike the millions of other content creators on YouTube.

Tucker was not paid in advance for his show. Tucker did not promise ( contract ) to produce a certain number of shows. Tucker made no promise to provide anything on any schedule.

Tucker did anything else a YouTube creator did. The question becomes, does the "any" media include social media? Does any media include speaking in the digital public square?

Would commenting online be considered "provide services"? Would writing an email list a providing a service? Running a SubStack considered a service? Would standing on the corner, yelling at strangers be providing a service?

At some point, providing services taken to an extreme, include, well, everything. It would amount to a universal gag order. But stepping back from a free speech argument, this is a workplace dispute.

Decision

This will all come down to the court. Where is the dividing line between services and free speech in the world of social media?