With Twitter in the news, and revelation after revelation coming out about how governments and politicians used the social media giant to skew public opinion with algorithmic fiddling and outright bans, let’s not forget Facebook.
Adam Schiff hasn’t.
Last week, the Democrat Congressman from California, together with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), sent what amounts to an open letter to Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Nicholas Clegg, urging Meta to maintain its commitment to keeping dangerous election denial content off its platform.
These Democrats worry that Facebook — Meta’s most successful product — might “alter or roll back certain misinformation policies, because they are temporary and specific to the election season,” say Schiff and Whitehouse.
Rollbacks on censorship, they say, “would be a tragic mistake. Meta must commit to strong election misinformation policies year-round, as we are still witnessing falsehoods about voting and the prior elections spreading on your platform.”
Why “must” Facebook continue to patrol its platform, striking down or underplaying “unfounded election denial content”?
Schiff and Whitehouse assert that Donald J. Trump spreads “the Big Lie” and it would be a huge mistake to allow that lie to air on their platform. They don’t want Trump allowed back on Facebook.
It’s been just weeks since Trump was permitted back on Twitter, where he has not taken up his old hyper-posting habits. Trump’s so far confining himself to his own “Truth Social” platform.
But as far as “the Big Lie” goes, would Schiff & Co. argue that The Epoch Times should also be censored? After all, in its coverage of this issue, by Frank Fang, the concluding section of the article was devoted to showing that Trump’s “Lie” might be in parts, uh, true.
Would Democrats ask Meta to suppress The Epoch Times, too?
Censorship is a hard habit to break.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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2 replies on “The Big Ask”
If Schiff and Whitehouse have their way with Facebook, the real effect might be rather different than they hope.
Release of internal communications from Twitter confirmed what virtually everyone already come to recognize prevailed at Twitter. The difference now is a change in legal standing, and increased difficulty for rôle-playing everyday Nazis who denied the obvious.
Virtually everyone also understands that the same dynamic that prevailed at Twitter also prevailed and continues to prevail at Facebook, though the everyday Nazis will continue to rôle-play otherwise until and unless similar confirmation is produced.
But now Facebook will be measured by the rule provided by Twitter. Whereäs Facebook and Twitter and YouTube could suppress the story of the Biden computer documents when they worked to the same end and the mainstream of the media was behind that suppression, for Facebook and YouTube to try to suppress a story even as it went viral on Twitter would be another matter. They’d look ridiculous, and erode their positions as shapers of perception and of culture.
It’s not just Facebook and YouTube. The entire mainstream media also looks ridiculous, as they ignore the Twitter findings or make light of them.