Freedom of speech is under attack from the big cybertech companies
As Glenn Reynolds writes:
Note that I say “free speech” and not “First Amendment.” The First Amendment only limits government, but “free speech” is — or at least until very recently was — a broader social value in favor of not shutting people up just because we don’t like their ideas or politics. As for the “private companies can do what they want,” well, that’s not the law, or the custom, and hasn’t been for a long time. It’s especially not true where the companies have, as these companies have, affirmatively represented to users and shareholders that they don’t discriminate based on viewpoints.
It’s a tricky question, because although I do believe that shutting down speech—even “hate speech”—cuts into the free flow of ideas so vital to liberty, I also believe in private companies having the right to control what appears on their site. Just as an example, I ban people and/or erase comments that I find especially offensive (not just somewhat offensive). I have no obligation to provide a platform for garbage.
But this seems like an ominous development. Roger Simon describes it:
I’ve spent about ten minutes of my life on InfoWars [note from Neo: that’s about 10 minutes more than I’ve spent there] and think Alex Jones is a boring blowhard of little interest except to those who want to spend their lives worrying about whether there was a second gunman on the Grassy Knoll.
Nevertheless, the group censorship of Mr. Jones, led by our friends in Cupertino, the makers of the ubiquitous iPhone…is one of the scarier developments of our time, if not potentially the scariest.
Apple is one hypocritical organization banning the puny Jones. They — the first trillion-dollar company — are the people who are genuflecting to the Chinese, kowtowing (that is definitely the proper word) to Xi Jinping and Co., and making all kinds of accommodations to that totalitarian regime for access to their giant market.
From Glenn Reynolds again:
(1) This is absolutely the first stage in a coordinated plan to deplatform everyone on the right. It’s not really about Alex Jones at all. (2) Aside from its free-speech implications, which are serious indeed, this also looks like an antitrust violation: Media companies, which compete with Jones for eyeballs, colluded to get other media companies to shut him down. Were I Jones, I’d file an antitrust suit. This is more than arguably conspiracy in restraint of trade (and possibly a conspiracy to deprive him of civil rights).
…[W]hat Apple is doing picking on the basically irrelevant Jones is a form of corporate virtual signaling, a particularly dangerous form if you believe in the Bill of Rights.
Yes, I know they’re a private company not subject to government restrictions, but they are bigger, richer, and more powerful than almost every government on the planet, maybe more, which leads me to their noxious and equally powerful comrade-in-tech-arms…. FACEBOOK.
The Internet behemoth — lest they be humiliated, I suppose, and not seen as politically incorrect — immediately followed in Apple’s footsteps, deleting all things Jones. They were joined rapidly by half a dozen others including Google and, bizarrely, Spotify. Did anyone have Alex Jones on his playlist?
But remarkably, only a few days before, Facebook’s founder, my fellow Jew (yes, it’s relevant) Mark Zuckerberg, had announced he was allowing Holocaust deniers on FB. From CNET:
He said content from Holocaust deniers should not be taken down from the platform because “I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong,” he said.
“It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent,” he continued. “I just think, as abhorrent as some of those examples are, I think the reality is also that I get things wrong when I speak publicly.”
Yes, it’s hard to impugn intent. Maybe the intent of all these social media powers is perfectly great. “Intent” usually is. That’s why we tend to focus on process, the rule of law, and the defense of the freedom of speech even of those with whom we disagree. Tyrannies always cite their own good intent, as well. No one (or very few people) ever said “I’m going to censor that person, or I’m going to jail that person without due process, because I have bad intentions towards them.”
[NOTE: I’m writing this post rather quickly because the power company just kindly called with a recorded message saying that in a couple of minutes they’ll be turning off the power for about an hour. And here I was just about to do my laundry!]
[ADDENDUM: Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy believes that the survival of our democracy depends on these bannings:
Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) August 6, 2018
This from a US senator? I think maybe the word “democracy” doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. By the way, I wonder why he didn’t use the word “republic” instead (that’s sarcasm on my part; I certainly know why he didn’t).]
[ADDENDUM: Double standards. Of course.]
The giants of Silicon Valley effectively operate as monopolies and, despite the arguments of many libertarians and conservatives, must not be allowed to continue their one-sided assault on the most important of all our freedoms. Most leftists seem happy to have the rights of anyone deemed “hateful” curtailed, since the de-platforming almost never affects anyone on the left.
Often, when I am not sure of my own position on something, I look for analogous situations in which my moral compass is on a more sure footing.
A shopping mall is private property. I think we all agree that it is a public space and that everyone has a right to enter. However, there are rules of conduct that if you violate can get you thrown out of and banned from the mall. So part of me is thinking that the corporations do have a right to regulate conduct in their public spaces.
Part of the problem in this case is that corporations have come under heavy legal pressure to prevent their platforms being used for “hate speech”. It is possible that this legal pressure (mostly from the left) might lead them to over react and ban legitimate free discourse.
Interesting theme… I wish I had a definitive position to state, but I don’t.
What if Walmart and Walgreens colluded together not to sell any life sustaining drugs to certain deplorables who needed those? Why do big corps have the rights to violate rights of citizens that even Government can’t, why does corps have more power than the Government? The phony pseudo libertarian agreement that a private company can do whatever it wants doesn’t hold water, if hospital can’t deny service to someone for political reason then no company should be able to deny service to a person because of his political affliction, that is a clear violation of civil rights. This is not the baker case, we are not asking Facebook to provide any special service to Alex Jones, we are asking them not to deny service to Alex Jones that they provide to everyone else because of his political affiliation.
Words and ideas. Humanity has risen to great heights because we have used words to explain ideas. Freedom to do so has generally led to better outcomes.
Rather than censor unwanted or hateful speech, why not encourage speech that challenges the sites that the silicon giants want to censor? After all, that’s how Fox News got started. Instead of trying to silence the left, the right came up with their own vehicle for challenging the left’s ideas. The open flow of ideas through free speech. The only way to stay free.
Like TV, the internet had great promise. However, there is a tendency for such technological tools to gravitate toward the lowest common denominator and to be used to control people. Alex Jones may seem an insignificant loss, but that’s the camel’s nose under the tent. Who is next?
At what point does a high tech information company (e.g., Facebook, Google, etc.) become more like a public utility than just a private company? The distinction is between a flow of information and access to it.
Imagine being able to see all the power lines running through your neighborhood, but being told that, unlike your progressive neighbor, you are not permitted to hook up to them to power your house. This example is more akin to the point we are at with conservatives being blacklisted and shadow-banned. Would we condone an electric company refusing to provide power to a black, Latino or Asian on the basis of their race or a person on the basis of their political leaning?
Public utilities are private companies, too, but as they provide a public service they are regulated to a certain extent. If the high tech companies wish to be exclusionary while providing a public service, then perhaps they should be treated like utilities, but then who watches the watchers?
In the beginning of the Internet, large companies like AOL Compuserve and various ISPs wanted to be seen as common carries such as the phone company so they could not be held liable to lawsuits based on content.
Clearly they no longer worry about that.
They’re private companies but resemble monopolistic common carriers, so some curtailment of their freedom of contract is conceivably legitimate. Certainly moreso than harassing bakeries and diners.
Weirdo Alex Jones is being made a martyr. There will be many more. This is the digital equivalant to book burning. It must not stand.
“The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.”
Tommy Smothers
Chris Murphy…yet another reason for me to get the hell out of Connecticut ASAP. He, and his fellow Democrats have turned what was the home of Colt, Remington, Winchester, GE, Aetna, and maybe soon to follow, Pratt, Sikorsky, Hamilton Standard, etc, into a debt ridden, politically correct, economic wasteland. Now he turns his attention to make sure we don’t hear any “bad” ideas.
physicsguy:
Except for Murphy’s own bad ideas.
“This is absolutely the first stage in a coordinated plan to deplatform everyone on the right. It’s not really about Alex Jones at all.” Glenn Reynolds
Bingo.
They label it “hateful speech” because they can’t rebut it. They know they’re losing the debate. The #WalkAway movement is just one example of their failure to sell their ideas. Conservative black commentators are especially feared because if the Left loses black voting solidarity they’re “up a creek without a paddle”.
Just a matter of time till they label this site as hateful too. Which of course it is, as everyone on the right is deplorable, irredeemable and a racist Nazi… right?
I have no obligation to provide a platform for garbage.
True.
You also have not made me a promise to allow me access, nor do you have partners and told them that you’ll give me access, or are a publicly traded company and told your shareholders that you’ll allow me access, and as such this does not apply It’s especially not true where the companies have, as these companies have, affirmatively represented to users and shareholders that they don’t discriminate based on viewpoints.
I’m sure Google, et al, have good lawyers who can tell them what promissory estoppel means.
I wonder if Mr. Jones is on his knees, right now, thanking the lord for his enemies. I also wonder if Mr. Cook realizes that he just did the stupidest thing ever.
KRB
At what point does a high tech information company (e.g., Facebook, Google, etc.) become more like a public utility than just a private company? The distinction is between a flow of information and access to it.
Treat them as if they’re publishers, and that they’re publishing this content, and strip them of safe harbor protections. That will get their attention right quick. Dozens, if not hundreds of libel lawsuit would flow.
This is a designation they would not want.
They’re private companies
No. They’re all publicly traded, and as such, are beholden to shareholders and boards of directors. Now, it is quite possible those people won’t give a flip, but I’m sure some of them will.
There is a conservative outfit that owns some shares of these stocks, so they can attend shareholder meetings and ask uncomfortable questions of the CEO. I’m pretty sure they object.
Could somebody clarify this for me.
I’ve heard that the social media sites aren’t liable for the content on their sites because they’re a “common carrier”; and one of the requirements for being a common carrier is that they don’t “filter” ideas.
KRB
facebook would budge if there are 1 million conservatives protesting in the front door of the facebook headquarter. The left will never be afraid of the right if the right in America continues to not engage, protest and let their voice be heard. Propriety gets you no where in today’s political climate, coming out to vote every 2 years is not enough. Tommy Robinson wouldn’t have been released if there weren’t thousands of protestors demanding his release. Trump supporters can accomplish a lot more if instead of attending trump rallies they spend the same energy matching on streets in silicon valley.
to reiterate the position
if you dont censor, or control, you are a conduit and so, not liable and everything good bad evil or not can flow
IF you censor, for whatever reason, then you are a publisher, and so the full weight of the job is on your shoulders, not a partial job as cherry picking would allow all publishers to sidestep all responsibility…
if you make yourself responsible by changing something in some way, you are no longer a bystander providing a service like the telephone, or the mail
.
oh, they are not going to explain this to you… but thats the point… they got the social media to stand up and take action, and so in crypto fascist sneaky way they got them to take up RESPONSIBILITY (voluntarily as expressed by their actions), which of course now needs the state to be involved… ie. under Communism the state owns the means of production, under fascism the company is separate but is fully responsible, and the state has the main levers! so in this game the game is, how do you get your hands on the levers of things you dont have the levers of? [see how they are going after uber and lyft]
tricky
IF the owners of the exchange node, never stepped in and did that.. they could NOT be held culpable or liable (and unlike airports no govt was making them liable YET as no handle control YET)
the second neo cuts my post down, she is a publisher and an editor, and so becomes responsible for ALL content… (Whether she likes it or not).. she will argue against it, but thats what the worm turns on… if it doesn’t turn on pay, office, inks and so on.. then what DOES it turn on? the over site of another’s writing in some way, even if the editor does it for space
doesn’t matter if the reason is length… that’s an edit…
(for length. plenty of such precident by editor publishers)
the reason is the final published appearance of the blog – that’s aesthetic to a customer base in which she is a publisher who hopes doing so will insure revenue in donations…
has nothing to do with money but roles and hats
there is no third option of civilian version in between the two in such things
(unless the state defined it (a ha moment?))
I already knew the trap in terms of these games – but you cant even start to point it out
bet your dying to know where this will go!!!!!!!!!!
outside the realm of a licensed definition one becomes something by taking up the role of something, and its not a point of degree… your either a publisher or not a publisher, you either edit or not edit… you either change content or not change content or pick what is seen or not pick what is seen…
and this is a double bind catch 22!!!
think why… im tired of giving the answers away 100%
kind of fun to watch…
like a chess game when you understand whats going on and the double bind that is set up…
they are going for check mate in this game and everyone stepped in a big oozing sliming pile of it
first mistake is assuming law without actually knowing law and for lawyers applying law and concepts
unless your the owner of the servers, with the software licenses as yours, and the lines are yours to the outside world, and you restrict access… then you got no home and no privacy and no rights your assuming you have when your online and writing as i am now…
how do i become a professional car detailer..
you go out and detail a car… charge for it – get more work
ta da – this is true for all tasks and jobs that are undefined by the state or not overseen or licensed
how do you become a publisher
set up a medium of information exchange
and make yourself a gatekeeper over the writers
doesnt matter WHY or what rules you use, its the power assumed over the content in some form that makes you responsible for the whole thing
if there is a paper on the ground
and you pick it up and its nothing
and you throw it down, you get a ticket for littering
you weren’t putting it back
you took possession, it became yours, you then cast it
please pay the bailiff
regardless
when the mouse trap is sprung is a bit late to learn how to avoid mouse traps.
There is no way to get the government out now
even if the smallest thing they do is define things for the sake of clarity and legality
and the good of mankind, alien races that copy us and their own pockets..
going to be fun to watch!!!
why?
cause another thing is coming into fashion and it hasnt quite stuck yet but it will
even if you don’t do it now
and it was legal then
if you did it then
your in trouble now
which means people may be liable for the publishing or lack of editing in the past!!!
or if they edited in the past they cant switch out and stop editing just to change their being
i know others can explain it better
sorry
but it all hinges on taking up responsiblity
and now you have it, they gonna make sure you dont do a shabby job of it
Soap box, ballot box, __________, unintended consequences. This will not end well for some.
Dave on August 7, 2018 at 3:03 pm at 3:03 pm said: What if Walmart and Walgreens colluded together not to sell any life sustaining drugs to certain deplorables who needed those? Why do big corps have the rights to violate rights of citizens that even Government can’t, why does corps have more power than the Government?
ooh oooh mr kot ta can i answer ooh ooooh…
the 2nd one is easiest.. you volunteer to use their equipment and system you live by their rules or dont use their stuff… (no one yet has done the unthinkable and just steal all the customers by not doing that stuff)
some people have switched away from smart phones and thats how you are not so subject to them…
as far as the collusion thing, well thats a bit more difficult…
IF there was no collusion, it might be possible… technically you are allowed to refuse service for any reason you want, no t-shirt, etc… (though the new order took away part of that freedom if the person can construe that the reason is color, etc. even if it isnt)
with the collusion it can be argued that the means by which they achieve this selectivity is by raising the price to infinity… and then argue price fixing and or different prices for different people…
people can generally do anything legal or not covered by law in some way in a business… is it wise? probably not, which is why you dont see certain things as there is liability… personal liability..
if i dont want to sell to people with red hair, technically i dont have to…
however, if i dont want to sell beer to women, thats a problem
however if a woman doesnt want to serve a man, and have a all girl bar, not a problem
its a lot more complicated now
glad we will endlessly be paying politiicans to argue and divide up that monstrosity we let them play with way after i am dead and gone…
After all, that’s how Fox News got started. Instead of trying to silence the left, the right came up with their own vehicle for challenging the left’s ideas. The open flow of ideas through free speech. The only way to stay free.
which is why you say left and right as in the soviet union
when in the US there is only the left and not left
there is no “right” in the sense they are using it from last century early pre 2nd war
Would we condone an electric company refusing to provide power to a black, Latino or Asian on the basis of their race or a person on the basis of their political leaning? no, but now the times has an editor that will basically make the same arguments certain Germans made about certain privileged people responsible for all the ills… recognize the remake? take away their jobs has been going on now for a while, and is kicked into high gear. and of course given boomer demographics limiting medical by age will have a disparate impact on that group, till that ends and its changed before it has the impact on others…
these arguments started 40 years ago and inched all the way to today..
they weren’t adopted as fast as in the past version
they are now embedded…
and without need of any supporting cogent argument
Sarah Jeong is just the most overt version
she is a barometer…
will the masses tolerate this female hitler like they didnt female ghostbusters?
probably…
we will know if times subscriptions plummet..
and they then come to their senses and write a paragraph of contrition
but given the holodomar starvation thing, dont hold your breath
I’ve heard that the social media sites aren’t liable for the content on their sites because they’re a “common carrier”; and one of the requirements for being a common carrier is that they don’t “filter” ideas.
see my point above…
they filter… they change content… doesnt matter what…
they are then a publisher, by their own actions and invitation
they can argue against it, but would have more luck arguing a salient point to identify pornography… not just when they see it
Inside every leftist is a fascist just waiting to come out. Who’s surprised by this?
And parker is absolutely right about the law of unintended consequences.
It’s going to come down hard & some will be completely aghast at what they have unleashed.
“Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on the one who starts it rolling.” – Proverbs 26:27
John G,
They never learn. For every action there is a reaction. People on the right are slow to react, but when push comes to shove, the shove is relentless. This will not end well for some
Why is it okay to discriminate someone based on their political beliefs but not their skin color? isnt our thoughts the more important aspect of life which truly define who we are as a person that truly deserve more protection than something as trivial as the color of skin?
The point isnt that i chose to use their services or not, but the fact that when all the companies who provide that service that is crucial to me staying alive colluded to deny me that service leaving me with no where else to go to get that service to sustain my life, they essentially murdered me without actually getting their hands dirty. Isnt that exactly the left’s argument that if all food providing services colluded to deny minorities access to food they will all starve to death. So it is necessary to make laws to prevent people from killing gay people or Muslims in that fashion, but such method of murder is perfectly fine for liberals to be used to kill conservatives like Alex Jones. If liberals truly believe all lives are equal, why do they think gay people or black people deserve to live more than conservatives?
Parker:
Some here have recently said
“But, but, but, the Principle of the thing!” /S
Right, Rule 303.
This is a result of people thinking they haven’t gotten tired of winning.
When you think you are winning against evil when what is actually going on is that Trum’s people are sympathetic to Leftists and that’s how Comey got through, then it is merely underestimating the evil of the Leftist alliance, not winning. Not a single Leftist died, including HRC that may fall dead tomorrow. Winning a war by not killing the enemy is not very realistic.
Now he turns his attention to make sure we don’t hear any “bad” ideas.
You made it obvious last time that anything that disagrees with your classical physics based education, credentials, and worldview is a bad idea. You are not so different compared to them as you would like to believe.
If my mind is what defines us, not our outward attributes, then how can you justify the less important attributes like skin colour get more civil protections than the more crucial aspect of us, the essence that truly defines who we are? It’s absolutely baffling that political affiliation isn’t part of the civil rights, or simply abrogate the categorisation of what attributes can’t be discriminated and makes discrimination based on any reason illegal. Intentionally Leaving political ideas out of the civil rights protection was just a trap to make legally discriminating conservatives possible.
Being sympathetic to devils make you an enabler and accomplice of the devils, explain to me how being a knowing accomplice of the devils moral?
At this point, I’m afraid the libertarian-style argument of “they’re private companies” won’t do. Private companies in collusion with a political party (or at least with the same political agenda) are a form of fascism.
Go look up the history of IG Farben or Krupp, and how they willingly supported Hitler’s agenda.
This slavish adherence to ideology will get us all killed. It took less than a day for them to move on from Jones to other targets. I can easily imagine this snowballing in a very short time.
This is extraordinarily dangerous.
“They’re private companies
No. They’re all publicly traded,” [IRA Darth Aggie @ 5:38 pm]
Public trading of corporate shares (ownership) on a secondary market doesn’t make a corporation a public entity any more than multiple owners of a savIngs account makes a savings account a public entity (BTW that ownership can be bought and sold or traded as well).
In business parlance public corporations are those somehow subsidized by the government (e.g., tax exemptions for their income or outright government funding). They have no shareholders and any member of the public has the right to demand certain information from them. Private corporations are not responsible or obligated to the general public; You are correct that the corporation is responsible to its shareholders as distinct from the general public,
If all the shares of a corporation were owned by one person no one but that shareholder would have any right to know anything about the internal workings of the entity; one shareholder, one hundred shareholders, one hundred thousand shareholders, the number doesn’t make any difference.
It’s very easy to tell the they can do whatever they want to because they are private companies logic is faulty. Whenever the left agrees with you then it is bad logic, just like whoever claim to be conservatives but are bffs with the left like bill Kristol and McCain are moles and villains
When public companies affect river that a population depends on for drinking and agriculture, there is some process of oversight and regulation that ensures they don’t harm the public good. Dumping raw sewage into the thing to poison people downstream would be rather frowned upon.
The internet is probably the most important tool for governance that we have, but we are willingly letting these companies pretend like they own the river just because they squatted at its source. They are poisoning the well of public discourse with censorship and purposefully lying about it. No sympathy from me, will be happy when the hammer comes down and they are held liable for the millions of ways they censor and break the law.
Murphy mouths noxious propaganda. Free speech must be banned to save Democracy. Classic misinformation. Free speech must be allowed to save Democracy.
Hey Murphy! The Second Amendment protects the First. Suck on that.
Trump cannot block trolls from replying to his tweets on twitter – from a judge’s ruling:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/what-the-realdonaldtrump-ruling-actually-means/561146/
Facebook, Twitter, and Google search are all monopolies serving the public, much like a road that was originally built by house developers but is turned over to the gov’t for maintenance.
Time for the US Federal gov’t to declare those three all “public digital utilities” to be regulated by a new regulatory commission — a majority of whom would be Rep appointed to start with.
Public Digital Utility — to ensure that offensive speech which is included in the First Amendment is not censored, yet “incitement to violence” and terrorists may be (and maybe not).
The Digital Utilities Commission should not be able to DUCk its duty now.
Comrade, the future beckons from the past. Szamizdat.
Pingback:In Defense of Free Speech; and, Hopefully, the Rebirth of Blogging – The Laughing Wolf
ymarsakar,
There’s a difference between thinking an idea is a bad “idea” and disagreeing with the premise of that idea, and censoring the expression of that idea. A distinction which you do not seem to understand.
Quibble alert:
“Maybe the intent of all these social media powers is perfectly great.”
Um, should that be “….perfectly clear.”?
(By the way, it’s perfectly reasonable for Zuckerberg to allow Holocaust Denial on his platform. After all, it’s HIS platform. Moreover, he wouldn’t want to be accused of bias—favoring Jews, would he?…. No, not he. And besides, he’s a brilliant billionaire and he’s on the Right-Side-of-History (TM) to boot; so that if anyone could, would, should know precisely what are the intentions of anybody and everybody, it’s him. QED.)
Mr. Zuckerberg may be starting a war he can’t finish.
The troll-nerds who hang out at the kinds of places that InfoWars also inhabits (although not necessarily sharing Jones’s obsessions) get their kicks responding to “dissing” – and they can be very inventive and relentless.
I’m not an up-to-date geek, and I don’t play one on FaceBook, but even I can think of lots of ways to throw digital sand in the cyber machinery.
Personally, I do not support any governmental intervention, so long as there are alternative platforms on which conservatives can respond, and to which they can migrate, which there are. The social media are a very big bakery, but not yet the only hotel in town.
FWIW, here are a couple of posts by Doc Zero (John Hayward), which, although not directly on topic, are typical of the zeitgeist that the Left is fostering.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1011582182228418563.html
Thread by @Doc_0: “The Left really does think they can harass people and call for political violence without any pushback whatsoever. It’s the double standard […]”
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/986197920713191424.html
Thread by @Doc_0: “Under the political rules of engagement in both US and UK, the fight is over when the Right loses a vote or court decision. For the Left, the […]”
PS to those who don’t know Doc0: he was a long-time commenter on the HotAir Greenroom until that was shut down a couple of years ago, most notable for the artistry of his snarky with. Breitbart hired him and sentenced him to mostly blah PR releases, with only an occasional solo article featuring his talents (I always wondered why they bothered hiring him if they weren’t going to use his writing properly); then I lost track when he left there, and only recently discovered these ThreadReader posts; he has quite a few more.
I hate reading articles that just duplicate Tweets from twits, with all the useless redundancy; TR strips out all the overhead and leaves a “clean” coherent post.
Twitter Delenda Est (among others).
lets get it straight, where did the people who are picked to run such companies get their education and where does education get its justificaiton?
John Jay Ray: The crisis in the social sciences has grown so obvious that even mainstream social scientists have begun to acknowledge it. In the past five years or so, disinterested researchers have reexamined many of the most crucial experiments and findings in social psychology and related fields. A very large percentage of them—as many as two-thirds, by some counts—crumble on close examination. These include such supposedly settled science as “implicit bias,” “stereotype threat,” “priming,” “ego depletion” and many others known to every student of introductory psychology. At the root of the failure are errors of methodology and execution that should have been obvious from the start. Sample sizes are small and poorly selected; statistical manipulations are misunderstood and ill-performed; experiments lack control groups and are poorly designed; data are cherry-picked; and safeguards against researcher bias are ignored. It’s a long list.
The second dilemma has to do with the first, though it is less often discussed. The great bulk of journalism—what used to constitute the stuff of a large metropolitan daily newspaper—involves only a handful of general subjects. We read sports, politics, weather, celebrity doings, and pop science. Without them the trade would collapse. Readers and editors alike especially love stories that begin “A new study finds . . . ” or “Scientists have discovered . . . ” This last sort of news—easily digested findings that scientifically explain the mysteries of human behavior—is fed and constantly replenished by the same social science whose elemental assumptions are withering before our eyes. This is bad news for the news.
The circle is vicious indeed. Journalism craves pop-science stories from researchers, who like publicity and must get their work into print, according to the pitiless mandate of publish or perish. The researchers’ urgency encourages corner-cutting and conclusion-jumping, which conveniently tend to produce flashy findings, which are inhaled by news outlets, which publish them under the headline “Researchers find!” and then turn back to the researchers to demand more, more, more.
Matt_SE on August 7, 2018 at 10:19 pm at 10:19 pm said:
At this point, I’m afraid the libertarian-style argument of “they’re private companies” won’t do. Private companies in collusion with a political party (or at least with the same political agenda) are a form of fascism.
Go look up the history of IG Farben or Krupp, and how they willingly supported Hitler’s agenda.
This slavish adherence to ideology will get us all killed. It took less than a day for them to move on from Jones to other targets. I can easily imagine this snowballing in a very short time.
This is extraordinarily dangerous
* *
You make several good points.
One might argue that crony-capitalism and rent-seeking privileged over open-market capitalism is a necessary precursor for government-instituted fascism, which in its original derivation meant “bound together” (as in wheat sheaves) without necessarily specifying how the binding was accomplished.
Once the element of legalistic coercion is imposed, you have full-on WW2-style fascism; we aren’t quite there yet, but I have no doubt that President Clinton II would have pushed us further down that road.
Labeling President Trump a fascist because he is busy CUTTING the bindings is Leftist propaganda at its height.
I once read a huge book about Krupp’s activities, and they put a high premium in placing corporate survival over ethics. There is no doubt that many German businessmen (at least in the beginning) thought Hitler would be “good for the country” aka “the company” and others bought into the racial cleansing aspect as well, but the existential pressures they were also under were much higher than anything FB et al. are facing, which in fact are nil.
FB et al. are not the slaves of this ideology: they are it’s willing co-conspirators. Starting with targets that everyone hates, or who have no resources to fight back, is their standard MO; you can see it in every suppression campaign they have waged. Once they have established that no one will push back (because: who cares about Alex Jones? he should be suppressed!) they will indeed move on to other targets.
As has been noted about Candace Owens (and others), big-names with many supporters can get re-instated, with double-faced mealy-mouthed apologies, but try getting back on-line if you aren’t a mega-star in the conservative firmament.
Even then, if the platform has deleted your old posts or content, you have sustained a major economic hit.
And once the support wanes (see the axe job on Milo Y), then fugeddaboutit.
I first noticed this pattern in the California same-sex-marriage fracas, where the Left started by attacking Mormons and other “fringe” religious groups (carefully avoiding black churches, which actually constituted the majority support for banning SSM), closed down little-old-ladies trying to run businesses, then — having had no opposition from press or law enforcement or any Democrats (and few national Republicans) — moved on to eating their own people (eg, Brendan Eich).
Now I can see that pattern everywhere.
Addendum: the fact that quite literally no one* has suffered any serious consequences for the suppression, coercion, intimidation, and even assault of conservatives, why shouldn’t the Left decide it can move on?
President Trump is the first power-player to stand up to them at all.
That may have been a fatal mistake by the Left, in not cutting their losses on Clinton and cozying up to Trump, rather than declaring nuclear war on him.
*Some small fish may go to jail or pay fines (and not many of them), but we all know the Kingfish have suffered very little, if at all. Most of them have been rewarded for their service.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/opinion/alex-jones-infowars-facebook.html
“The good news is that tech companies don’t have to rely on vague, malleable and hotly contested definitions of hate speech to deal with conspiracy theorists like Mr. Jones. The far better option would be to prohibit libel or slander on their platforms.
To be sure, this would tie their hands more: Unlike “hate speech,” libel and slander have legal meanings. There is a long history of using libel and slander laws to protect especially private figures from false claims. It’s properly more difficult to use those laws to punish allegations directed at public figures, but even then there are limits on intentionally false factual claims.
It’s a high bar. But it’s a bar that respects the marketplace of ideas, avoids the politically charged battle over ever-shifting norms in language and culture and provides protection for aggrieved parties. Nor do tech companies have to wait for sometimes yearslong legal processes to work themselves out. They can use their greater degree of freedom to conduct their own investigations. Those investigations would rightly be based on concrete legal standards, not wholly subjective measures of offensiveness.
Private corporations can ban whoever they like. But if companies like Facebook are eager to navigate speech controversies in good faith, they would do well to learn from the centuries of legal developments in American law. When creating a true marketplace of ideas, why not let the First Amendment be your guide?”
* * *
I greatly admire David French, and agree with him on many (not all) things, but this is such pie-in-the-sky naiveté, I find it very hard to credit him with believing his own nonsense. (Well, he is publishing in the NYT, which is trying to keep up the pretense of objectivity, but still….)
Sure, any rational person could see that enforcing libel laws is a “better option” than stoking partisan warfare by banning vaguely-defined “hate speech,” but French’s recommendation misses an essential point.
They don’t want any marketplace for opposing ideas, have no interest in the First Amendment when it isn’t protecting them, and definitely have no desire to make any kind of common cause for the good of the polity.
That big “if” in the bolded sentence simply does not apply.
Related – Kevin D. Williamson pointing out the hilariously grim contradictions:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/progressive-heretic-hunters-attack-anders-carson-wee/
If Zuckerburg was born in a true socialist country his facebook would be taken away by a son of a high government official nor would he get a fair share for his little invention or the power he has right now to influence public opinion. He would be an ant just like everyone else no matter how brilliant his little experiment was. Capitalism rewards brilliance while socialism rewards liars, stop believing the illusion that socialism is fair, no it is not, like every hierarchy someone will do better than the other, only difference is truly brilliant people arrive to the top in capitalism while incompetent losers who is very good at manipulating mass emotions or get ahead in a bureaucrat environment (yes men or someone who is good at azzkissing their superiors) get to the top in socialism. I hate it when these tech billionaires trying to kill the environment that made their success possible, why? because they don’t want no more new Zuckerburg to take their place now they can collude with a political party that promise to help them extend their monopoly for eternity.
All tyrants began as idealistic revolutionists who wanted to change the system for the good, then when they become the system they were just as corrupted and rudeness as the ones they overflown.
I disdain the whole argument framework.
Look at this woman’s tweet stream
https://twitter.com/lenathalion
If this kind of vile person can be there then why not anyone else?
The clarity for me is when somebody BREAKS the LAW.
In the past, publishing was controlled by specific people and there may or may not have been editors and there were people who passed out literature freely. Even then there were vile things said about political candidates. With electronics and automation there is simply a million fold increase in the ability to publish content for a billion people to see. You can publish content in Arabic, Spanish, English and get this people – you can publish pictures that have hidden text that only people with a deciphering password can read. Let that sink in. These platforms provide people the ability to secretly communicate using tools like this (not steganography although that would work also)
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/fontcode-technique-can-hide-secret-messages-inside-font-glyphs/
How should the debate be framed?
This is a war of ideas and concepts. Those who are the most articulate like Jordan Peterson will win. Most people that like Jordan simply aren’t going to have the taste for an Alex Jones. Why not just let his ideas die naturally on the vine of ideas. How can the technology giants employ enough people to sift through the billions of messages and weed out content not deemed “ok”.
If there is an incitement to violence which I have seen and then I’ve been dismayed to report but have Facebook tell me it was ok, then it should go. But other than that, ideas that are good can flourish, ideas that are bad can flourish until people realize – this is hurting my life.
Dave,
That is the reason why Zuckerberg cozied up with Obama and company.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358363/Steve-Jobs-Mark-Zuckerberg-meet-President-Obama-technology-summit.html
Without the Communications Decency Act, Section 230 (the Good Samaritan Rule), which upended about 500 years of jurisprudence, the tech companies would have found this censorship difficult or impossible. Basically, Section 230 provides that an ISP (Facebook, Google, Twitter, in this case) can’t be held criminally or civilly liable for information published on their platform by a third party. This sounds like a laudable goal but has had the unintended consequence of shielding anonymous trolls who, say, drive their 8th grade classmates to suicide with online harassment (as one example).
The second part of Section 230 provides the same immunity for ISPs who restrict access to the site’s content “in the public interest.” ISPs can use Section 230 as either a sword or a shield, depending on the problem of the moment. During the Obama administration, 47 state Attorneys General asked Congress to repeal the Section 230 immunities, and were opposed by the ACLU. The two parts of 230 – “You can’t touch me, I didn’t compose that material and I don’t know who did,” and “You can’t touch me, I dropped that contributor because I think those comments are inappropriate,” certainly seem to clash. Congress has decreed, in effect, you’re immune from all laws on conduct, ISP, as long as you don’t edit the content. BUT if you decide to prevent or restrict viewing that content, well, you’re immune from doing that, too. Or, basically, you’re immune from everything so go build an empire.
When the CDA was enacted, in the late 1990s, the Internet was for the most part a scattered collection of chat rooms and bulletin boards; in all likelihood there were very few in Congress who considered it more than a novelty with some potential. I seriously doubt that anyone envisioned the incredible concentration of power in very few hands that is the current situation. It’s unlikely that substantial progress will be made against the current censorship until the Section 230 Good Samaritan provision is repealed, but I’m not holding my breath.
To me, the term Trumpanzee is racist.
I was just on a FB friend’s post commenting and then another commenter used that term. I simply removed my content and will disassoiate myself with that person figuratively – not unfriend literally.
Artfldgr on August 8, 2018 at 10:35 am at 10:35 am said:
* *
Good points, Art.
Baklava on August 8, 2018 at 12:53 pm at 12:53 pm said:
Dave,
That is the reason why Zuckerberg cozied up with Obama and company.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358363/Steve-Jobs-Mark-Zuckerberg-meet-President-Obama-technology-summit.html
* *
Old news, but a solid tell up there with “I’ll have more flexibility after the election.”
Looks kind of like, oh, I don’t know, collusion?
Rich Lowry has a good post on the ban-wave:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/08/alex-jones-banned-lowry-219343
“Of course, the social-media companies aren’t government entities. They can silence whomever they like without violating the First Amendment. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
The power of social-media platforms is enormous. They are, for all intents and purposes, the public square. Facebook affects the fate of publishers with every change to its algorithms, and has demonstrated again and again the ability to make media entities march to its beat.
This suggests that these companies have a responsibility, in keeping with their outsize role in the public debate, to give the widest possible latitude to free speech. They certainly shouldn’t make sweeping decisions, like the swift, collective action against Jones, in an arbitrary manner.
Everyone has known about Jones for years. It can’t be that suddenly, after propagating stupid lies for a couple of decades, he was discovered to be grossly violating the guidelines of almost every important social-media platform at exactly the same moment.
…
The lonely dissenter to the social-media moves against Jones is Jack Dorsey of Twitter, who stipulated that Jones didn’t violate the rules of his platform. He said that it’s important to stand by straightforward principles, impartially enforced, lest “we become a service that’s constructed by our personal views that can swing in any direction.”
For this, he is getting eviscerated. Dorsey’s other offense is saying that journalists should refute the likes of Jones “so people can form their own opinions.” This is what used to be a liberal chestnut, that the best way to combat speech is with other speech.
It is now considered a hateful, retrograde point of view. An illiberal wind is blowing. We won’t miss Alex Jones when he’s gone, but the banning almost certainly won’t end with him.”
MOS 7562 on August 8, 2018 at 2:05 pm at 2:05 pm said:
Americans desire Congress to do their job and “fix problems”. Then when the fix is in, they complain that the fix needs to be removed, so they desire Congress to be even more powerful. This cycle eventually turns a democracy into an oligarchy and then a totalitarian wonder land.
I hate it when these tech billionaires trying to kill the environment that made their success possible, why? because they don’t want no more new Zuckerburg to take their place now they can collude with a political party that promise to help them extend their monopoly for eternity.
That is true. It is also true that capitalism produces the funds and social tension required for socialism and marxism to invade, hijack, and infect the host body. The Tsar of Russia abolished serfdom, which was pro capitalism, but that in itself was merely the weakness that a viral invasion exploited. Capitalism produces and nurtures a figure like Zucker boy, while socialism maintains the status quo of a Zucker boy to keep out all his competitors: which is everybody else that wants to be another Zucker or Amazon.
Socialism inevitably leads to centralized Marxism which is one step further on dystopia which is another step further on totalitarian control. Deep State wins again.
And they did it by selling you all entertainment from Hollywood and from Google. And Americans ate it right up. Ate that rat poison right up.
The public primarily blames DC because they know in some hidden part of their heart of hearts, that because they have abdicated the power of a free people, DC is their master. When something goes wrong, just go to the Master and complain. It’s not like you are allowed to do anything about the Massa’s property.
Facebook and Google made money from advertisements which were based upon user created content. Google did not create content, just a convenient way to find other people’s content. As a result, they became gatekeepers, because the American people did to them what people did to the “free press”. They gatewayed it with a special few “elite” that were supposed to be human “experts” with “credentials” and “Authorities” that peons and others like me are supposed to Obey.
Heh. Quite the national stupidity system going on there, America.
The free press was supposed to be about everybody’s ability to own a press and use it to publish. Then somehow Americans got sold and bought the con that this was a “free press” that is only available to licensed White House pedophiles and Leftist agents like Chomsky. Oops.
Too late.
Then they did the same mistake again with the internet giants. They were just so useful. That rat poison just smells so good. Then Americans fell for it again and gave voluntarily their power over, now they want it back?
Too late. Getting banned by the Left is a good thing. It forces people to realize that they don’t need the MSM telling them what to think or to be working for FB without compensation. Pain is how Leftists and Red people learn.
physicsguy on August 8, 2018 at 9:22 am at 9:22 am said:
ymarsakar,
There’s a difference between thinking an idea is a bad “idea” and disagreeing with the premise of that idea, and censoring the expression of that idea. A distinction which you do not seem to understand.
There’s a lot of things which you seem to think I do not understand. About the vast majority, 99%, of those things are a result of your misconception and human jump to erroneous judgments.
When you knee jerk reject the idea without considering it, and start labeling people with whatever convenient label you think is good, you somehow don’t see that this is the same as Leftists using the racist label to rationalize any and all anti Left positions. They don’t need to consider the idea when they can prejudge it. You think your prejudices are rational or right, because others agree with you. So does the Left consider their own judgments rational and right. Human thought is a kind of make believe game people play with each other.
The primary reason you put this as Either Or between two false dichotomies is because it benefits your position. The choice is not between suppression and believing an idea is bad. The choice is between considering other people’s position without knee jerk labels that lead to self righteous beliefs based on scientific tribalism or any other kind of tribalism, vs the choice of not considering fundamentally exclusive positions via labels and consensus agreements to exclude.
The Left agreed upon consensus to get rid of Alex J, as his information was getting too dangerous for America. They did not do so before because they lacked consensus. Their choice was not to consider Alex Jones or ban him. The choice they made was one which you physics did not conveniently consider as something people could do in an Either Or dichotomy. That is because once you did consider it, you would find that they bear too much of a similarity to your tribal and personal thinking, and we can’t have that kind of double think going on.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2018/06/19/the-conscious-universe/#comment-2390724
For the sake of accuracy, Google bot has arrived at the record.
Physics’ response is shortly below that.
Please, go through at least an undergrad 4 years of physics, so at best you have an inkling of understanding of what you are talking about.-P
One of the justifications the Left used for getting rid of Alex J, is that he was reporting fake news, or lying, or coming up with conspiracy theories. He needed re-education, but absent re-education camps Ayers/Alinsky style, banning him is the best they can do as a consensus agreement. When Alex Jones begins to have an inkling of understanding, then perhaps they can unban him.
Physics is one person here. Once it becomes the consensus of most people here, including the power of the blog and behind the blog, then this consensus has the ability to make the same choice as Google and FB. This is why trolls get banned/ignored. There is a consensus about them. That does not mean the consensus view is correct. It does not mean it is incorrect either. It just means there is the power to do so if people determine by consensus that this is justifiable.
The Leftist alliance got to the way they are because people let them get away with thinking like that without pointing out the logical and ethical problems. That is because if anyone, such as me, that did point it out, the least vague response I would get is that “I don’t understand what I am talking about”, from the Leftist point of view. That is because the Leftist point of view does not include me in their consensus. But is that due to a lack of understanding on my part or due to a misunderstanding on the part of the hive social complex of consensus agreement?
Ymarsakar:
On this particular blog (and most blogs), trolls get banned because I (or the blogger, whoever it might be) decide to ban them. That’s the criteria. The decision is not a democratic one.
Sadly, it seems that there is a continuum between that which qualifies as a private business concern and that which qualifies as a civilization-altering, de-facto, quasi-governmental, regulatory agency.
I say “sadly” because it’d be significantly easier on all our brains if there were a hard-and-fast line. And also because my libertarian leanings normally incline me to say: “Private company; it can do what it wants.”
But we can’t deny there is a problem here.
It is a problem which undermines our whole system of self-governance and our theory of the validity of government authority.
To see where the problem lies, let’s run through how that system works, briefly:
1. Natural Rights of Self-Defense, Association, Hiring, Delegation: We as human persons intrinsically have just authority (Natural Rights) to use proportionate force to defend innocent persons (both ourselves and others) against wrongful attacks on their life, liberty, property, and anything else touching on their basic dignity as persons (e.g. privacy in certain ways). We also have a Natural Right to form political associations so as to coordinate our joint efforts towards achieving the common good (defined in Burkean/Thomistic terms; i.e., referencing only goods which are maintained or increased, not diminished or consumed, in being widely shared). And, we have a Natural Right, either as individuals or working in politically-associated groups, to hire employees and delegate to them the exercise of any just authority which we ourselves have. (A delegator cannot, however, delegate to another an authority which the delegator lacks.)
2. Delegated Use-Of-Force: We The People employ police and military. We authorize them (by delegation) to exercise, on our behalf, our own just authority to defend innocent persons by force. But this concentrates the training and tools of force-using into a subset of our population, which is risky. Therefore these forces must be subdivided in direct-command-authority, procedurally constrained, and well-regulated.
3. Delegated Lawmaking: We The People employ various kinds of representatives (construed broadly to include judges) to create and maintain a system of laws which serve to direct and constrain the use-of-force by the military and the police. (E.g., we outlaw murder so that the police DO go ’round arresting murderers; we don’t outlaw Seventh Day Adventism so that the police DON’T go ’round arresting Seventh Day Adventists.)
4. Elections: We use elections to directly and indirectly hire and fire our creators and maintainers of laws.
5. Voter Decisions: We use our knowledge and ideas to decide for whom we should vote in those elections.
6. The “Marketplace Of Ideas”: In public and private fora, we engage in wide-ranging dissemination and critical examination of knowledge and ideas. This is called the “Marketplace of Ideas.” To the extent we know the truth and are not misled, and to the extent we can examine and discard bad ideas while examining and approving good ones, we will be able to vote informedly and thereby govern ourselves wisely, through the intermediary agency of our employees, the Government. Systemic protections of this “Marketplace of Ideas” (e.g. our First Amendment protections on the Press, on Religious Exercise, and on Assembly) exist to prevent our system of government from being undermined by denying relevant information/ideas to the decision-makers (the voters).
That’s our system.
Note that Natural Rights are fundamental in ONE sense; so I started the description there. But widespread dissemination/discussion of knowledge and ideas is also fundamental to the system, in a DIFFERENT sense. The just authority to set the whole thing up is a matter of Natural Rights; but the plausibility of the whole thing working requires the Marketplace of Ideas.
So the question is:
GIVEN that the Marketplace of Ideas is fundamental to our system;
GIVEN that the Marketplace of Ideas has now been largely relocated from barrooms and town-hall assemblies to Internet platforms owned by private corporations; and,
GIVEN that the Marketplace of Ideas is now threatened by unaccountable (i.e., unelected, unaudited, unscrutinized) decision-makers in those private companies using a mix of obvious bans and much-harder-to-detect weighting algorithms to selectively deny certain kinds of knowledge and ideas to the electorate;
…given all THAT, how will we preserve our system?
Having asked a rhetorical question in my prior post, I think I should propose an answer to it in this one.
Here’s the proposal:
1. Distinguish between platforms and ideas expressed via those platforms;
2. Platforms are subject to scrutiny as common-carriers;
3. Such scrutiny must ALWAYS be directly susceptible to elections, not to entrenched hard-to-fire bureaucrats;
4. Positive and negative weighting of ideas expressed via platforms must always be adjustable via flexible customization and selection by the platform’s consumers. If I want to view right-wing content, I can; it can’t be banned or shadowbanned. If I want to view left-wing content; I can, it can’t be banned or shadowbanned. Hidden weighting and centrally-controlled selection ought to be illegal for platform owners.
5. Only one form of content-preference-weighting can be offered as a “default” by the unelected decision-makers in a private company that owns a platform; namely, the ENTIRELY UNWEIGHTED content of the platform. When I first join Facebook (or whatever), I should just see everything. To the extent that I, through my own conscious voluntary decisions, apply filters to my experience, those decisions are mine alone.
6. The privacy of a persons selections of content-weighting, as well as their identity and history and other personally-identifiable information, ought to be protected through regulations similar to the GDPR privacy regulations. My employer, my government, my coworkers, my friends, and advertisers cannot access information about my platform-customization without my consent, and I can revoke that consent at will.
That’s my proposal. It’s intentionally vague, intending to hint at a plausible legal doctrine and laws to support it, without my actually trying to write them.
I’m curious what Neo and others think about it.