Posted on 05/03/2019 4:55:52 PM PDT by semimojo
Free speech took a whacking Thursday as Facebook cited its policies against “dangerous individuals and organizations” to ban such figures as Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos and several other extremists from the site. They were purged from Facebook-owned Instagram, and their affiliated fan pages will also be shuttered in what the Wall Street Journal called the company’s “most sweeping” action “yet against online provocateurs.”
Facebook was within its rights to evict the accounts, even if they’ve done nothing criminal. It’s Facebook’s house, after all, and because the government isn’t involved it’s not a First Amendment issue. But the absolutism of Mark Zuckerberg’s rash housecleaning this week leaves a scrape and a dent in our strong free speech traditions. Facebook, like other social media organizations, has taken the narrow position that ideas and expressions that don’t violate the law can be too dangerous for dissemination—and must be suppressed instead of debated or debunked.
Free speech’s health has traditionally been measured in America not by what we will allow speakers to say, although that is important, but what listeners will tolerate. If enough of us stomach the dissemination of wicked conspiracy theories, race hatred, radicalism, blasphemy, poisonous lies, militancy, fearmongering and ugliness, that’s a good sign that free speech has found a safe harbor. But if the government censors the bounders and miscreants who spew these ideas—or if corporations, churches and other organizations work to strangle their expressions—then free speech is in trouble.
I won’t characterize the United States as a free speech paradise, but for the better part of a half-century free expression has thrived here. If you wanted to publish an inflammatory book or pamphlet or newspaper, you could almost always find a printer who would take the job (although you might have to drive to the next city), a newsstand or outlet to sell it, and a postman to deliver it. But as social media became a dominant platform for ideas, spreading them farther and wider and at greater volume than ever before, our free speech paradise is starting to look a little weedy. Surely there are better ways for Facebook to deal with belligerents like Jones and Farrakhan than throwing the site’s master switch from “on” to “off,” both silencing them and casting them into social media darkness.
Some of the “problems” posed by firebrands like Jones and Farrakhan are of Facebook’s own making. One reason Jones composes such incendiary posts is that he knows they’ll be widely shared. Facebook loves sharing because the more sharing that goes on the more time users spend on the site and the more money Facebook makes. The downside of all this sharing is that even if you don’t follow Jones you can end up seeing one of his posts if one of your “friends” shares it. I suspect that some of the anger directed against accounts like Jones’ comes from users who recoil at such unwanted content shoved into their feeds. They can blame Jones, but the real perp is Facebook, which could rewrite its code to limit dissemination of posts by “bad actors” to only the users who have explicitly followed him. This would give Jones’ detractors some peace without punishing his followers—and without offending the First Amendment.
My friend Nick Gillespie of Reason urges the social media platforms to develop a set of filtering tools that will allow users to block content while still permitting the more curious and (I’ve got to say it) more tolerant to read stuff Facebook wants to ban. Another way to deter “bad” behavior on Facebook would be for Facebook to “tax” it. Today, Facebook is free (that is, ad-supported). What if it charged troublemakers like Jones for every post and a surcharge for every time one of his posts is read? Neither of these two modest proposals would de-Jonesify Facebook or make it safe from disinformation, but they would reduce the phenomenal reach that social media can provide. (Facebook could donate the proceeds if it didn’t want to look like it was profiteering from “hate.”) These deterrents might require rejiggering the law to make it legally safer for social media companies to police their users. As Bloomberg recently reported, YouTube lawyers dissuaded staffers from searching on their own for questionable content because federal law shields the tech giants from liability for the content if they don’t know about it. If they take a proactive role in searching for bad content, they risk losing these protections.
The worst thing about Facebook’s ban is that runs counter to the long-running American tradition of trusting the public with knowledge, even knowledge that is potentially “dangerous,” to use the Facebook formulation. Even more disturbing, much of the media is buying it: It’s telling that none of the stories about the Facebook ban in the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal located any critics of the social media giant’s actions for quotation (other than the banned users, like Jones). Instead, they recorded applause for the ban from Media Matters, the Anti-Defamation League, Muslim Advocates and Paul Barrett of New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, who seem to find victory in exterminating extreme expression. If the press can’t sense the injury inflicted upon free speech by Facebook, we’re in bigger trouble than I thought.
Ping
If Facebook wants to interject itself into content then hold them accountable for all content—it should be all or nothing. Otherwise their practices are discriminatory and should leaved them sued for their bias and bigotry.
[What if it charged troublemakers like Jones for every post and a surcharge for every time one of his posts is read? ]
There are other social media sites.
Gab for instance is not so big on police state speech control.
Should FaceBook swirl the bit-bucket, my life would not change one wit.
The problem is discrimination by a private business is perfectly legal unless it's done on the basis of some protected characteristic like race, religion or age.
Political views don't qualify.
Me neither, but then who would FReepers bitch about?
Many are bias for religion.
Abandon Fecebook
can't sense it? They are the new fascists encouraging it!
Facebook is already implementing funnels that will constrain the spread of smaller content creators, most of them conservative.
His ideas are dumb. Blocking Jones from being shared? Sharing is the whole point of social media: the more people like your material, the more it’ll be spread to new eyes. Charges for each post? Insane.
The internet in general is a public square. Aside from porn or imminent threats, tech giants have no business banning “hate” or even having the opportunity to define “hate.”
Pretty soon, right wingers will lose even their right to have a website because of these corporate censors.
The PHONE NUMBER AT THE CAPITOL IS 202-224-3121. After watching this one you really need to raise some hell with these people BEFORE the oligarchs in Silicon Valley RIG THE NEXT ELECTIONS. And, trust me here, THAT’S WHERE THIS IS GOING!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH53ViUaqqw
But Facebook isn't. It's a lemonade stand in the corner of the square.
Should they be required to give free lemonade to everyone passing through?
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