Category: First Amendment rights

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First Amendment rights ideological culture nannyism social media

Reversal of Charge

paypal, government, surveillance, censorship

Using PayPal never guaranteed smooth sailing.

But until recently, the problems users encountered mostly pertained to PayPal’s targeting of fraud — not with whether a user uttered wrong thoughts or pursued projects disfavored by corporate implementers of a Chinazi-style social credit system.

More and more, though, PayPal is informing individuals with unwelcome thoughts that they can no longer use PayPal and that PayPal will hold their funds “for up to 180 days . . . we’ll email you. . . .”

PayPal has, for now, rescinded — or partially and temporarily rescinded — policy provisions pledging to fine users $2,500 for “misinformation” or “hate speech.” 

But PayPal is still targeting thinkers of wrongthink.

An example is Eric Finman, whose Freedom Phone provides access to apps banned elsewhere. After ousting him, PayPal held onto $1.2 million in his PayPal balance. Finman eventually recovered the money, but the delay “killed all the momentum.”

Biologist Colin Wright was ejected for criticizing gender ideology. PayPal won’t confirm this without a subpoena. But these and many other examples follow a similar pattern. Often, PayPal comes down like a ton of bricks right after a user utters a viewpoint PayPal dislikes.

I’m appalled. Many of PayPal’s founders — Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, David Sacks and Max Levchin — are appalled. They say that PayPal’s original mission of empowering people is being perverted.

We’ve seen how government officials and partisan political operatives have whispered in the ears of Facebook and Twitter, instructing such companies to censor and deplatform users. Are they also instructing PayPal?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Big Ask

Adam Schiff, liar

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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First Amendment rights Internet controversy media and media people social media

Jack’s Right — Mostly to Blame

Jack Dorsey, Twitter, free speech

The latest Twitter revelation has the same “feel of the truth” about it as the Elon Musk-instigated reporting of Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss. 

What is it?

“Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has taken full responsibility for the social media platform’s many failings — admitting he ‘completely gave up’ pushing back against powerful activists in the company,” explains Lee Brown in The New York Post.

It is refreshing for someone at the commanding heights of the culture to accept blame, not spread it liberally onto others.

And to clear up loose ends of the mystery.

“The site’s former CEO took full ‘blame’ in a blog giving his ‘take’ on the ‘Twitter Files,’ which have exposed a series of extraordinary behind-the-scenes maneuvers buckling to political pressure, starting with censoring The Post’s exclusive exposes on Hunter Biden’s laptop.” Brown’s report goes on to say that Dorsey “now believes that Twitter should have stuck to three core principles, including keeping the company out of controlling posts and algorithms spreading them — and being “resilient to corporate and government control.”

Well, yes.

Dorsey was overwhelmed by a new investor bloc. “‘I planned my exit at that moment knowing I was no longer right for the company,’ he wrote of his resignation just over a year ago.”

The eagerness of the new investors and personnel to manipulate the system for their political causes — the covidian response and the Democratic Party — must have sure seemed insurmountable. And the legacy media’s full-court press, on top of fine-tuned interests of multiple agencies of the federal government, could only have made it worse.

But it’s not an excuse for cowardice, is it?

Still, it is more difficult to stand up against your side’s tyranny — especially when it’s making you rich in the process.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

Rumble and FIRE

New York, free speech, censorship, hate speech, social networks

Federal officials feel entitled to demand the censorship of persons uttering renegade opinions about pandemics and elections. Local police officers feel entitled to arrest persons who commit parody against them.

And New York State officials now feel entitled to compel social-media companies to restrict speech that the officials dislike.

The video-sharing platform Rumble, dedicated to making the Internet “free and open once again,” is teaming up with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in a lawsuit to stop the New York law.

The goal of AB A7865A is to force social media networks “to provide and maintain mechanisms for reporting hateful conduct on their platform.”

“Hateful conduct” is speech that some people dislike. Of course, even the most acidulous asseverations are protected by the First Amendment if they don’t entail actual violations of anyone’s rights. Gangsters and terrorists are not legally entitled to use speech, or anything else, to commit robbery or murder — certainly not on the specious grounds that they have rights to freedom of speech or to bear arms.

The new law is not about such things. Under it, if social-media companies fail to provide ways for users to complain about “hateful” comments, they could be fined up to $1,000 per violation and investigated by the state attorney general.

Clearly, the law would institute a massive incentive to bury social platforms in fines and investigations if they permit the “wrong” kind of speech. The number of those easily offended by others is infinite.

Also infinite? Excuses for those in power to stomp on opposition speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Internet controversy social media

The Medium Is the Messenger

In all the talk of the “stolen election” of 2020, perhaps too much has been made of accusations of specific and vague acts of vote fraud, and not enough of the chief dirty trick: The suppression of the news about the Hunter Biden laptop, a story about Biden Family corruption that was banned from Twitter and more subtly underplayed algorithmically by other Internet services. 

Deleting this one cache of information from voters made a huge election difference.

Then, in the inglorious post-election debacle, a sitting president of the United States was removed from the Twitter platform.

It was, in a sense, a coup d’media. 

In a democracy, freedom of the press and independence of the press is crucial. The fact that Twitter had been captured by partisans, and that the “social media platform” became a sub rosa partisan political media platform was an epochal shift.

But when Elon Musk took over, changes started happening. And chaos ensued.

What was not chaotic, though, was the reinstatement of @RealDonaldJTrump to the platform.

Musk took an informal Twitter poll, and reinstated the former president.

There has of course been much wailing and gnashing of teeth since then, but, also since then, another poll by Mr. Musk: “Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” 

The result was a 74.4 percent YES plebiscite.

“The people have spoken,” tweeted the current Twitterer-in-Chief, Mr. Musk. (Trump not having resumed his activity on the platform, still limited his e-bursts to Truth Social). Amnesty begins next week.”

And then: “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” just for a classic touch. 

That Latin phrase translates as “The voice of the people is the voice of God.” It is not. I want a Twitter with the freedom to speak, for myself and others, not determined democratically, but by right — as customers. 

That’s the way to ensure people have access to information.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Rumble Resists

Rumble, free speech, France

In a world of almost universal assaults on freedom of speech, it is heartening when an avowed defender of it refuses to relent under pressure.

Rumble’s reason for being is to help people “control the value of their own creations.” The company creates “technologies that are immune to cancel culture.” Their mission is “to protect a free and open internet.”

A mission statement is one thing. Abiding by it in the face of major opposition is another. But Rumble has just told the French government to get lost for demanding that it deplatform certain sources of Russian news.

Stressing its policy that users with unpopular views “are free to access our platform on the same terms as our millions of other users,” Rumble has disabled access for users in France rather than acquiesce to the government’s censorship demands. Rumble will go back online there if it wins a lawsuit challenging the legality of the demands.

Like Elon Musk, who said that he wouldn’t block Russian news sources at the behest of governments “unless at gunpoint,” Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski says “I won’t move our goal posts for any foreign government.”

Rumble started out in 2013. By late 2021, Rumble.com was being visited by an average of 36 million active users per month.

If Rumble loses France, it loses less than 1 percent of its current users — but also an opportunity for substantial growth. 

On the other hand, it holds on to what it is.

And what its customers value. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: This Week in Common Sense, the weekend wrap-up of this program, is published on Rumble as a video nearly every week. Last weekend’s episode is “It’s a Funny World.”

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Minority Medical Opinion Squelched

covid, censorship, wrong think

The Bill of Rights was originally understood as curbing the power only of the federal government.

This began to change with the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from depriving persons “of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Thanks to the “incorporation doctrine” interpretation of this amendment, provisions like the First Amendment now apply as much to state and local governments as to the federal government.

Except that many officials, disdaining these protections, simply ignore them.

So although obliged to make no law “abridging the freedom of speech,” California’s government is abridging the freedom of speech of doctors. A new law authorizes state medical boards to penalize doctors who utter speech contradicting “contemporary scientific consensus” about COVID-19.

Doctors are suing the Newsom administration to block the law from taking effect. According to their complaint, this anti-“misinformation” law would impede their ability to communicate with patients.

The doctors argue that the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech applies to expression of minority views as well as majority views; indeed, that minority views “particularly need protection from government censorship.”

Also that nobody can ever know “the ‘consensus’ of doctors and scientists on various matters related to prevention and treatment of COVID-19.”

Of course, free speech rights should protect even persons who say the moon is made of green cheese, let alone of those who disagree with official pronouncements about a vexing new virus and what to do about it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The FBI Is Misinformed

disinformation, FBI, free speech, 1st Amendment

The FBI is misinformed if it thinks that prosecuting persons who misinform solely for misinforming is consistent with freedom of speech.

The utterance of false statements, whether unknowingly or willfully, is nothing new in human history. And such utterances are impossible to avoid in any kind of discourse — for example, political debates — in which people disagree with each other about facts as well as values.

Indeed, one often hears both true things and false things. We must evaluate claims as best we can, using observation, logic, common sense and so forth.

But, somehow, the FBI has decided that “misinformation” and “disinformation,” chronic in campaign ads, political pronouncements, and domestic quarrels, are a crime when communicated in the context of an election.

An FBI document leaked to Project Veritas wants to explain “What Are Election Crimes.” This document lumps misleading speech with such actual crimes as electoral fraud and intimidation of voters.

Robert Spencer has questions about this assumption for the FBI’s, ahem, Election Crimes Coordinator, Lindsay Capodilupo. For example, how does the FBI determine what is and is not misinformation? Will there be an appeals process given the fact that certain notorious so-called “misinformation” — like the once-upon-a-time contested claim that Hunter Biden’s laptop is indeed Hunter Biden’s laptop — has turned out to be true information?

And — most important — how can wrongspeak as such be classified as any kind of crime in light of the First Amendment?

Stay tuned for the FBI’s answers. But not with bated breath, okay?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights government transparency

Cough It All Up

public private partnership

The state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration for censorship. Thanks to the lawsuit, we’re learning more and more about how federal officials have pressed Big Tech social media companies to muzzle users who dissent from the Official Narrative about the pandemic.

Much of the evidence coughed up as a result of the litigation has taken the form of email exchanges. An official might email a social-media rep something like: “We find this post disturbing. Can you do something about? Like maybe censor it?” The rep might double-quick reply: “Done! Anything else I can do today to secretly help the government circumvent the First Amendment?”

Certain officials have been particularly central in the saga, including eight persons that a judge is now letting plaintiffs depose: Anthony Fauci, former press secretary Jennifer Psaki, FBI agent Elvis Chan, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Carol Crawford of the CDC, Daniel Kimmage of the State Department, and a couple of others.

During her tenure Psaki spoke openly about the Biden administration’s demand for more censorship of “misinformation,” which is the new code word for disagreement. So it’ll be hard to deny that she said that stuff.

Crawford is in charge of the CDC’s digital media activities, activities that included regular meetings with staff of social-media companies.

Among other subjects, plaintiffs will be asking Anthony Fauci about an email exchange with Francis Collins discussing a “takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, which opposed lockdown policies.

I’m all ears.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom government transparency political challengers

Pro Bono No Bueno

campaign finance reform

The twisty highways and byways of campaign finance regulation bring us to another strange pass.

The Texas Ethics Commission is considering whether to effectively ban pro bono legal work for candidates. The method? Mandate that such work be regarded as an in-kind contribution subject to campaign finance regulations. 

David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, observes that most candidates “can’t afford to hire counsel and spend probably hundreds of thousands of dollars challenging the constitutionality of a law where the opinion may not come out until after the election. . . . Basically, the opinion would slam the courthouse door shut to candidates and most political committees.”

Campaign finance regulation has always meant curtailing speech and the activities that enable it and flow from it. This latest regulatory prospect is more of the same. As long as campaign finance regulation exists, there will always be obnoxious new ways to use it to hamper speech and action.

The commissioners, apparently seeing some merit in the pro-pro bono argument and therefore judging the issue at least worth mulling, have deferred their decision. It would have been far better to simply accept Keating’s objections and put an end to the proposed new crackdown then and there.

Meanwhile, Texans — especially potential candidates — must sit on the edge of their seats until the commission decides whether to make it prohibitively expensive to fend off unconstitutional assaults on candidates and campaigns. 

Not unlike the unconstitutional assault exemplified by campaign finance regulation itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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