Tag: Facebook

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First Amendment rights Internet controversy social media too much government

When Is Censorship Not Censorship?

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, censorship

Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is returning to its free speech roots.

Can we believe him?

While the restrictions on what you can talk about on Facebook are still pretty extensive, Zuckerberg’s outfit, Meta, is apparently ending the reign of “fact-​checkers” on Facebook and Instagram, as well as the platforms’ collusion with federal government “fact-​checkers.”

On Monday, I discussed the federal government’s screaming fits that led Facebook to ramp up “content moderation,” which I identified with a less euphemistic c‑word. But that word choice remains controversial. For example, a “global network of fact-​checking organizations,” the International Fact-​Checking Network, which includes Agence France Presse, objects to Zuckerberg’s assumption that Meta helped impose censorship.

“This is false, and we want to set the record straight, both for today’s context and for the historical record,” announced IFCN. The Network then “warned of the potentially devastating impact if the group were to end its worldwide programs.…”

If censoring in obedience to government demands is not censorship, what could be? The article doesn’t explain. AFP and IFCN are simply saying that they don’t want freedom of speech; it’s dangerous.

Of course, free speech can have costs. 

But censorship does too: suppression of truth and impeding the means of learning truth. 

The article doesn’t report on the costs of suppressing facts about, say, COVID-​19, vaccines, U.S. policy, UFOs, or Hunter Biden’s laptop.

AFP and IFCN simply assume that gatekeepers like themselves, with a vested interest in excluding divergent reports and viewpoints, must be allowed to keep excluding differing views and inconvenient facts from the “safe spaces” that apparently include all the very biggest spaces on the Internet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability First Amendment rights general freedom social media

Facebook, the FBI’s Snitch

Facebook, FBI, spying

All we have is the word of Department of Justice whistleblowers.

They told the New York Post that over the last 19 months, Facebook has been cooperating with the FBI to spy on “private” messages of users “outside the legal process and without probable cause.”

The targets were gun enthusiasts and those who questioned 2020’s election results.

“They [Facebook and the FBI] were looking for conservative right-​wing individuals. None were Antifa types.”

According to the whistleblowers, Facebook flagged allegedly subversive private messages and sent them to the FBI to be studied by agents specializing in domestic terrorism.

Facebook provided the FBI “with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.” Subpoenas were then issued to obtain the conversations that Facebook had already revealed to the FBI.

According to one DOJ source: “As soon as a subpoena was requested, within an hour, Facebook sent back gigabytes of data and photos. It was ready to go. They were just waiting for that legal process so they could send it.”

Facebook has issued a denial. The FBI has issued a non-​denial denial.

The allegations might seem very implausible but for the fact that as the November election approaches, the DOJ has been openly targeting Trump allies for claiming “that the vice president and/​or president of the Senate had the authority to reject or choose not to count presidential electors.”

In short, for talking out of turn.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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A Welcome Discovery

Joe Biden, censorship, Twitter, Facebook, 1st Amendment, free speech

In recent years, several lawsuits have been launched alleging collusion between the Biden administration and big social media companies to violate our First Amendment rights.

Unfortunately, most of these suits have been dismissed.

Journalist Alex Berenson did obtain some satisfaction after suing Twitter for suspending his account last year because he questioned the efficacy of COVID-​19 vaccines.

The suit accused Twitter of acting “on behalf of the federal government in censoring and barring him.” Berenson’s account was finally reinstated as part of the settlement. But only Twitter was required to take any remedial action; the government was required to do nothing.

Still ongoing is a lawsuit launched by the attorney generals of Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration for urging social media giants to suppress speech about things like COVID-​19 and elections “under the guise of combating ‘misinformation.’ ”

Now a judge has granted the states’ motion for discovery, enabling the attorneys general to make document requests and issue subpoenas to social media platforms. The AGs hope to learn which federal officials have been urging censorship and what exactly they said.

In a certain respect, these actions seem almost superfluous, since administration officials, including Biden, have repeatedly and publicly called on social media to censor harder.

But the more evidence we can get on how the federal government has been urging firms to censor on its behalf and in violation of the First Amendment, the better. 

That brings us closer to getting it to stop.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ballot access First Amendment rights

Zuckerbuck Sucker Punch

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, elections, democracy

Who should fund our public elections? 

Partisan billionaires? 

Last election, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, “gave $419 million to two nonprofit organizations that disbursed grants in 2020 to more than 2,500 election departments,” reports The New York Times.

The idea was to help officials deal with holding an election during a pandemic. No laws were necessarily broken. Apparently, private individuals and groups can give money to government election offices — even “with strings attached.” 

“Some conservatives see this largesse of ‘Zuckerbucks,’” informs a Wall Street Journal editorial, “as a clever plot to help Democrats win.” In fact, a Capital Research Center (CRC) analysis found the liberal non-​profit “consistently gave bigger grants and more money per capita to counties that voted for Biden.” 

“[A] deep dive into the available data shows that the funds were largely requested for get-​out-​the-​vote efforts, influenced voter turnout in favor of Democrats, and may have impacted the results of the election in some states,” explains the Foundation for Government Accountability. “According to currently available information, less than one percent of the funds were actually spent on PPE nationwide.”

Can you imagine the outcry if a group with “conservative ties” funded by Charles Koch was giving grants to help Republican-​rich jurisdictions rock the vote?

“[E]ven under the purest motives,” the Journal’s editorial offers, “private election funding is inappropriate and sows distrust.”

That’s why 16 states have since passed laws to restrict private funding of election programs.

Mr. Zuckerberg himself sees the danger in Zuckerbucks: “To be clear, I agree with those who say that government should have provided these funds, not private citizens.” Last week, he announced he would not be providing such funding in the 2022 elections.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights social media

Google Shareholders vs. Google Censorship

Joe Biden, censorship, big tech

Some Google shareholders are pressing Google for records of its communications with the Biden administration. And not just any old records. They are specifically demanding those pertaining to the administration’s demands for censorship.

Per the First Amendment, it is unconstitutional for government to seek to muzzle people for saying things that government officials disapprove of.

Yet the Biden Administration and others, including members of Congress, have openly (and repeatedly) urged big-​tech social media companies to more assiduously censor discussion of COVID-​19 policy, COVID-​19 vaccines, the nature of COVID-​19. The president did this again just last week: “I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets — please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that’s on your shows. It has to stop.”

Everything we’ve seen adds up to a slam-​dunk case against the government for violating the First Amendment. We know that government officials are asking social-​media companies to censor. They’re not hiding it.

Suing the government’s big-​tech lackeys — and government officials, when plausible — is one way to combat the evil.

The National Legal and Policy Center, a Google shareholder, is trying to secure a requirement that the company disclose the content of any communications between itself and the government related to the Biden Administrations calls for censorship. Last summer, the administration stated that it was “in regular touch” with the big-​tech giants.

Will Google voluntarily produce documents showing that it acquiesced in specific Biden administration demands for censorship?

No. But as Charles Glasser has pointed out, there is precedent for a judicial finding that media are de facto “government agents” when they work “hand-​in-​hand with government in violating constitutional rights.”

The effort may not succeed, but it’s worth a shot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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social media

Reversing the Irreversible

Heroes of Liberty, censorship, Facebook

Facebook has reversed its “irreversible” decision to strip Heroes of Liberty, a publisher, of all advertising revenue.

On December 23, Facebook locked the publisher’s ad account because of “low quality or disruptive content.” The ads pitched children’s books about figures like Ronald Reagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Thomas Sowell.

When Heroes of Liberty appealed, Facebook dug in its heels: “You can no longer advertise with this ad account and its ads and assets will remain disabled. This is our final decision.”

Heroes of Liberty editor Bethany Mandel suspects that a small group of hysterical critics of the Heroes of Liberty series provoked the action.

“These are the same people who riot and take down statues of our founding fathers,” she says. “They want to strip us of our ability to honor our heroes in the digital sphere and in children’s books.”

After sharp public criticism of the action, Facebook restored the account. The scope of the censorship proved a little too embarrassing, for now.

Just a silly little mistake that could happen to any giant high-​tech censor?

Well, no. 

One, somebody writes the algorithms.

Two, somebody confirmed the decision to kill a publisher’s advertising account solely because its books have the “wrong” mission.

Fortunately, we are getting more and more alternatives to the high-​tech censors … and the alternatives we already have are growing fast. The sooner we can make the Facebooks, Googles, and Twitters of the world irrelevant to online success, the better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture social media

F‑Book Goes Meta

Metaverse, Facebook, VR, virtual reality

When Mark Zuckerberg changed the name of Facebook’s parent company to “Meta,” months back, a lot of people found this funny.

But for some of us older folks, the name was more funny-​peculiar than funny-​ha-​ha. We’re used to “meta” as in Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics — the latter so-​called because the book came “after the Physics.” 

So what does Zuckerberg’s desire to take the lead in the “shared virtual reality” market (Meta’s confessed goal) have to do with “after” anything? After real reality, there’s meta-reality? Uh, OK.

I don’t think I’ll be an early adopter of that waste of time. I still have things to do.

But that’s old Facebook news. Now, ready yourself for today’s Facebook news: defending itself from John Stossel’s defamation lawsuit over a bad case of pseudo-​fact-​checking, Facebook has admitted that its fact-​checking is, from a legal point of view, opinion.

“In referring to its frequent use of ‘fact-​checker’ labels on posts,” explains The Patriot Post, “the conglomerate stated in its motion for dismissal, ‘The [fact-​check] labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory; to the contrary, they constitute protected opinion.’”

Truth is, as the New York Post observes, the whole “fact-​check industry is funded by liberal moguls such as George Soros, government-​funded nonprofits and the tech giants themselves.”

Facebook is moving beyond reality fast. Meta-​fast. When bad “fact-​checking” is defended as mere opinion, reality refracts to the point of unintelligibility.

Maybe Facebook’s name should be changed to Fraudbook, for while opinion is protected speech, labeling one’s opinions “facts” under the rubric of “fact-​checking” sure looks, if not like legal fraud, exactly, certainly fraud in common parlance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Stossel Sues Facebook

John Stossel, Facebook, slander, law

“After 40+ years of reporting,” offers John Stossel on his Facebook page, “I now understand the importance of limited government.”

“I just sued Facebook,” Stossel posted yesterday. “I didn’t want to sue. I hate lawsuits. I tried for a year to reach someone at Facebook to fix things, but Facebook wouldn’t.”

What needs fixing?

Facebook’s fact-​checkers dinged him with a “partly false”/“factual inaccuracies” label for his StosselTV video “Are We Doomed?” — without challenging any specific fact. And regarding another video, “Government Fueled Fires,” Todd Spangler of Variety quotes the case, which accuses Facebook of “falsely attributed to Stossel a claim he never made, and on that basis flagged the content as ‘misleading’ and ‘missing context,’ so that would-​be viewers would be routed to the false attribution statement.”

Stephen Green writes in support of Stossel’s $2 million lawsuit, demurring only to add that there’s only one little problem: “If there’s a way through the courts to change Facebook’s bad behavior, it’s going to take a judgment with a lot more zeroes on the end.”

The lawsuit in question is a defamation lawsuit.

I confess: it is for breach of contract that I am most annoyed with Facebook. The company brought us all in with an openness ethos and now relentlessly pushes progressive talking points. I suppose it’s futile to compete with Facebook’s lawyers on grounds of Terms of Use agreements, so perhaps that’s why the focus is on slander and libel and all that. 

It is as liars and promise-​breakers that Facebook’s ideological tyrants most grate.

What they did to John Stossel is unconscionable. But, sadly, not nearly uncommon enough.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

You Kill Me!

Biden, Covid, Facebook, censorship

“Facebook isn’t killing people,” President Joe Biden informed us yesterday. 

At least, “That’s what I meant,” he clarified ever-so-confusingly. 

Meant last Friday, after a reporter mentioned “COVID misinformation” and asked Joe: “What’s your message to social media platforms like Facebook?”

“They’re killing people,” replied the president. “I mean, it really, look — the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people.”

CNBC noted that Facebook “reacted defensively” to Biden’s friendly murder accusations, failing to hit LIKE on the administration’s characterization of its pandemic performance. 

“The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives,” a company spokesperson countered. 

“My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally that somehow I’m saying Facebook is killing people,” Mr. Biden chided the social media giant, “that they would do something about the misinformation, the outrageous misinformation about the vaccine.” 

After all, the Biden Administration has certainly rolled up its sleeves, as White House press secretary Jen Psaki put it: “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”

Yes, behind the scenes, this administration works with these behemoth social media corporations to help determine what hundreds millions of Americans will be permitted to say and share and discuss — on matters such as medicine, theories of disease origins, etc. 

Didn’t we just ride this pony? Remember the supposedly baseless, debunked, conspiracy-​nut-​fueled Wuhan lab-​leak theory? 

That idea was blocked from us by Facebook (and Google and YouTube) at the behest of Big Government Science … until just weeks ago.

It’s hard to keep up. 

Perhaps we are not supposed to.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Colluders

censorship, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube

Big Tech social media companies that once boasted of providing open forums now routinely ban speech that they disagree with — speech about elections, pandemics, Wuhan labs, or what have you.

How much of this suppression is private and independently initiated? How much is imposed at the behest of government officials who are supposed to respect First Amendment rights?

Government officials not only say that people should not say such-​and-​such; they also, increasingly, either complain that social media companies don’t do enough to gag people or herald the extent to which they do so.

Earlier this year, Reuters reported that “the White House has been reaching out to social media companies including Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Inc’s Google about clamping down on COVID misinformation. . . .”

Now the American Freedom Law Center is suing Twitter and President Biden so that the question of whether the government is in effect “deputizing” private organizations to assault freedom of speech can be adjudicated.

The Center is filing on behalf of Colleen Huber, a doctor Twitter censored and suspended for saying the wrong thing about COVID-​19. Of course, there are many other victims of the same policy, and it the Center seeking class-​action status for the lawsuit.

The government has been enlisting social-​media moguls as foot soldiers in a propaganda war. Whether this is done openly or behind closed doors, this war on free speech violates the Constitution. 

As we must hope the outcome of this legal action affirms.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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