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Ban the Feds from Social Media?
The world is changing constantly, and what is true one minute may not be true the next minute. People also have different levels of information about the world around them, and may believe something is true when it is not.
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We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm. We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes. In determining what constitutes misinformation in these categories, we partner with independent experts who possess knowledge and expertise to assess the truth of the content and whether it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent harm. – Meta Community Standards – Misinformation
The rather strange, meandering passage on “misinformation” standards for Facebook seems to indicate that they have not fully thought this through, which is perhaps why it was so easy for the feds to roll them to compel suppression of politically incorrect valid content.
The United States Government pressured Facebook to remove/suppress truthful content about (a) the degree of efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines; (b) the laboratory origin of the virus; (c) the superiority of a targeted protection approach rather than mandated attempts at general suppression. The US Government also demanded suppression of the existence of scandalous content on the laptop of the president’s son which was contrary in spirit and opposite in action to “We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes.”
One would think that an actual news organization would send a journalist to ask if (a) Ms. Harris is embarrassed by these actions undertaken at the behest of the Biden-Harris Administration; (b) whether there has been any internal White House review of this abuse, and; (c) if elected, will her administration continue to advance falsehoods when it is politically useful. [Yeah, I know. Feel free to snark at this bit of fanciful thinking.]
The “Meta community” has a right to know why Meta has not outed by name each of the government agents who sought suppression of the truth, and the times, dates, and content of such communications. And why Meta has not sanctioned, with multiple “strikes,” the US Government, itself a Meta user in violation of community standards for false posting on its sites (e.g., Facebook/CDC, Facebook/FBI).
(On a personal note, the only time I have ever been ripped off online was with a Facebook ad. And my Facebook post on June 10 with this link to an eminently reasonable article: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/climate-science-is-about-to-make was immediately taken down. I tried to link it after seeing this from Steve Hayward. I tried it again today almost three months later and Facebook has apparently decided to allow it, presumably after getting embarrassed by the Powerline guys.)
Published in General
It’s always a question of “who decides?” And lefties love their “experts” and government. If you believe the Intelligence Community has the truth as its highest priority, I’d like to sell you some prime real estate. . .
The IC has one priority — protecting their jobs from the likes of Donald J. Trump, who knows how richly they deserve to lose them.
The best comment I’ve heard about controlling “misinformation” and “hate speech” is:
Does Facebook really say that? If so, they’re basically saying that any political speech will be removed. I doubt that they remove just any political speech, though.
That is an exact quote from the “misinformation” standards page linked in the post. It is also why I said that they have not thought it through as your comment clearly indicated.
Idiots.
At least one of the now-gone university presidents made the same claim.
Yeah, it was a rhetorical question, though I often use that same phrasing to ask questions that aren’t rhetorical.
I question whether there is any political speech that is not hate speech. Of course, there is hate speech, which is different from hate speech.
The “intel experts” wrecked themselves with that “Russian disinformation” letter. And now Attorney Sergeant Major* Merrick Garland has announced the detection of a new Russian disinformation campaign.
It’ll be fun waiting to see what we’re not allowed to know this time. My advice to the Harris-Biden administration is to find someone to lead this effort who has more credibility than a jonesing meth-head.
* I just demoted him. He still outranks Tampon Timmy Walz.
I’m sick and tired of the word misinformation. Information is information. If you don’t like it, say so. But don’t turn the person who says it into a liar.
Or do call them liars, and prove the lie. Have something better than the say-so of the Ministry of Truth to back you up.
That’s why I try to get people to distinguish true misinformation from false misinformation, and to distinguish both from misinformation that could be one or the other, depending on misinformation that we don’t yet have.
It’s called taking back the language.
That sounds difficult.
Apparently it is, for some people. Still, it’s worth the effort.
For example, in 2019 Kamala Harris repeatedly advocated the banning of Donald Trump from Twitter, making even Elizabeth Warren sound like a civil liberties advocate in comparison.
That’s true misinformation. It’s true because she really did say that, but it’s misinformation because it will lead people into thinking she’s a dangerous anti-democratic authoritarian, which is true, but it’s leading people in the wrong direction–away from voting for her. Therefore that kind of misinformation needs to be censored.
Here’s the URL from the WSJ, btw.
First they wrecked themselves by missing the Big One – 9/11/2001. Our IC has been crap for many years — that is when they’re not proving to be the enemy of “We the People.”
One man’s “misinformation” is another man’s objective truth. Democrats don’t believe in objective truth. It’s why we find ourselves in steep civilizational decline.
The right wing helped get us where we are right now as well.
The major decades’ long war on drugs was used to subvert and mostly eliminate The Fourth Amendment. Neo cons in both parties did not mind at all.
Everyone in Congress voted in The Patriot Act in 2001, except for Ron Paul and one or two others. Many voted in re-upping that draconian measure in 2013 or ’14.
In late 2001, I was friends with a couple who were Dems, as I was then. They ardently loved the US Constitution. But then when their son got a huge contract from a surveillance company that was going to use that guy’s software to help spy on us Americans, they didn’t see the contradiction in praising their son for getting those funds and how harmful that was to our daily lives.
It seems like everyone but a few have their price.
Yep, the second-wave conservatives (post-Buckley/Reagan, like the Bushies) are turning out to be as destructive to our freedom as the lefty Democrats.
The excuse that censorship, cheating, lawfare etc are necessary because Trump is Hitler will become a blueprint for governance–everyone who notices corruption, incompetence and insanity is a Nazi and the opposition candidates are all always Hitler.
But, hey! That shouldn’t stop conservatives from criticizing Trump, right? Right?? I mean, you can never criticize
HitlerTrump too much on a paid membership, privately owned forum. . .Warranted criticism is what free adults are supposed to do. Nobody should be exempt. But resorting to caricature and echoing partisan slurs just to prove one’s own intellectual wonderfulness and independence is pathetic. Especially when the alternative to Trump is so appalling.
The government has the biggest bullhorn and bully pulpit of anyone. If they want to combat misinformation, that’s fine with me. But why do they want to use censorship to do it when they can refute it, or try to refute it, with their own megaphone? This is an easy distinction that can be observed, and there needsto be real consequences for government actors who violate it. If state actors do something like this…and I know that many of them did during Covid… they could be held personally liable in a civil action under 42 USC 1983 which is part of the KKK Act.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1983
I dont know if there is an equivalent law for federal officials but there should be. When bureaucrats who want to do this kind of thing realize they could be personally bankrupted, things will change.
The problem is that the defense will say that it was all well-intentioned applications of The Science(TM) in a time of crisis. It will be hard to prove they should have known better because so much common sense application of known science and actual data was suppressed. The CDC was consciously in the business of providing cover for intervention-happy governors and their hordes of pilot fish social media enforcers. If you can’t trust the CDC, who can you trust? Judges do not like the idea of being asked to actually look at the science and data. They want competing experts to tell us. And if lots of experts were in the tank for bad policy, therein lies the “consensus.”
Well that argument boils down to that the first amendment can be revoked as long as the government feels it has a good reason to do so. A judge shouldn’t even have to look at the data. It’s not relevant to the question of whether free speech was infringed upon.
The argument is that it is the “yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” exception because of an allegedly good faith belief that lives would be lost if the government’s wisdom were not universally accepted. It is crap but because the information ecosystem and science itself have been poisoned, it is uphill to demonstrate how wrongful and ungrounded these measures were.
I infringe on people’s free speech every chance I get.
Please stop.
Consider yourself counterinfringed, so there.
The phrase “turn the channel” was a common retort that was used as an argument back in the day of early MTV. It was typically used by liberals or pop culture when cultural conservatives would either voice concerns or complain about objectionable media content going out to the public. If you don’t like it, then don’t watch it, but you don’t have the right to determine it for everyone else – or that’s about is how’d it go. As I recall it was rather effective back when “E” for explicit material was being put on the new CDs and video games were becoming more than Nintendo Mario Brothers.
“Turn the channel” as a pop-culture retort might be useful as a reboot for the contemporary political right. But with a new spin to it. Since the Trump era the right have kinda become the new punk. The Left have become the stodgy scolds looking to take things away from you, while badging and lecturing you, when you just want to live your life.
It’s not quite this cut and dry, especially for the serious religious people. However for influencing the greater culture and hopefully politics I think it could be a useful tool. Punchlines help