Tag: first amendment

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First Amendment rights individual achievement social media

A Failure of Trust

Elon Musk, Twitter, free speech

Why is the Federal Trade Communication threatening to investigate Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter?

The FTC is reportedly reviewing the Tesla CEO’s takeover of the forum and will soon decide whether to conduct an anti-trust probe of the transaction.

Musk hasn’t been entirely clear about his plans for Twitter now that he is on the verge of acquiring it. But we can expect that this avowed free speech absolutist will do his best to ensure that tweet-speech is much more open than it has been. He won’t label every statement he dislikes as “hate speech” or “misinformation” and forthwith expunge it.

And this, I’m pretty sure, is the problem.

Certainly, no new “monopoly” is in the offing. It’s not as if we lack social-media alternatives to Twitter — or that Musk already owns the alternatives. His other gigs pertain to electric cars, tunnels, and space flight.

The problem must be that government officials, too, expect that Musk will be a much better friend of unfettered speech than the previous Twitter insiders.

Officials expect — but also fear — that his Twitter won’t routinely terminate the speech of persons who dispute “official” doctrines about COVID-19, elections, or what have you.

To fear the prospect of a Musk-run Twitter is to fear open debate — debates that are unavoidable and should be welcome if we value citizen control of government.

But of course, those who seek to control us worry: if the people do not agree with them about what is and is not a fact, what is and is not the highest moral and political value, they might not stay in power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets

Elon Musk Is Serious

Elon Musk, Twitter

Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk is showing the world how capitalism reforms wayward companies — like Twitter. 

It is done from within the system.

By stock ownership.

Becoming Twitter’s top stockholder — right after Musk told the Babylon Bee he just might have to buy Twitter to reform it — surely demonstrates serious intent.

But Twitter honchos have stressed that the mere advent of Elon Musk portends no major changes, a hint of things not to come. 

Moreover, a restriction on how many shares board members may purchase meant that had Musk joined Twitter’s board, he’d have been unable to ramp up the pressure for reform by becoming an even bigger stockholder.

So Musk chucked his original plan to join the board and decided, what the heck: If I do need to buy Twitter to fix its anti-speech policies, I better outright buy it. He has reportedly offered $43 billion.

He says: “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe.” But he now realizes that the company in its current form will never be that platform. 

“Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”

A week ago we asked, “Will Elon Liberate Tweeting?”

We’re still asking. Maybe the current owners love banning disagreement with themselves too much to give it up. 

Someone should tell them that are worse things to sell out for than open discourse and freedom of speech.

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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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Initiative-Crippling Law Clobbered

constitution, voting, speech, initiative, freedom

The right of citizen initiative is the right of voters to petition to get a measure on the ballot; then, if that happens, to vote on it and pass it. 

Many politicians hate this right and work to weaken it.

A few years ago, Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission considered sending a measure to the state ballot to treat voters who abstain from voting on a ballot question as having voted No. The proposal died on the vine, thankfully. But this is the kind of encroachment politicians fantasize about.

The latest attack on Floridians’ right of citizen initiative — a law to cap donations to such campaigns at $3,000 during the signature-gathering phase — has just suffered a less definitive setback.

Federal Judge Allen Winsor in the Northern District of Florida halted the new law from going into effect on the very day it was scheduled to do so. (Cutting it a little close, aren’t you, judge?) He ruled that contributions to an initiative campaign are obviously a form of political expression and that the law would inflict irreparable harm if even briefly in force.

True. 

If petition organizers can’t raise the funds needed to collect the required 891,589 signatures, it becomes enormously harder to get a measure on the ballot and let voters have their say. A say that foes of citizen initiative rights certainly do not want voters to have.

The ruling blocks the law only until the court reaches a final resolution on its constitutionality, so this legal battle isn’t over yet. 

What is most certainly determined, however, is that Florida legislators don’t care about the Constitution. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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social media

Threat/No Threat

Facebook, censorship

Last week, I asked whether the social media companies that mine our data — which they obtain from our posts — might not expend a little more attention to allowing us to mine our own data with more ease and sophistication.

Today, let’s look at the biggest problem.

Politics.

Facebook and Twitter initially gloried in enabling users to easily communicate political ideas and activism. 

Then they realized that people don’t all agree, and that platform headmen Zuckerberg’s and Dorsey’s friends got upset when they lost, blaming Facebook and Twitter for allowing “democracy” to be compromised.

Now, that was overblown. Democracy wins when people use communication technology to convince others — just so long as they do not opt out of democracy’s integral respect for minority rights. 

Which is what Democrats accused Republicans — Trump was “obviously” authoritarian. 

Which is what Republicans also accused Democrats — and throwing people off a supposedly non-partisan platform for partisan reasons sure looks anti-democratic.

Robby Soave, arguing to the contrary at Reason, says that “Both the Left and the Right Are Exaggerating the Threat Posed by Facebook.” His article’s blurb boasts his thesis: “Facebook can’t kill, jail, or tax you. It can only stop you from posting on Facebook.”

True — but is it true enough? The political ramifications of Facebook’s de-platforming strike me as a great breach of contract — not just a matter of no physical threat. Plus, as mentioned Monday and previously, big tech is not immune to Washington’s political pressure and massive financial clout.

Meanwhile, Mr. Soave quotes Candace Owens, whose advice seems apt to me: “Twitter and Facebook are Fascist companies” that we should be “slowly migrating away from. . . .”

Soave is spot-on to highlight the limits to Facebook’s clout, reminding that we can stop feeding their data mining operations.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights

Dissidents. Disagreement. Disinformation.

free speech, censorship

Politicians are ramping up assaults on political disagreement (with them) . . . only they call the disagreeable data “disinformation.”

The latest is a threatening letter by Democratic Representatives Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney to cable companies and digital providers such as Apple and Roku. Sample: “Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, OANN and Newsmax on your platform both now and beyond the renewal date? If so, why?”

Bottom line: Do more to deprive dissidents of a forum! (Here we loosely define “dissident” as “anyone who disagrees with Eshoo and McNerney.”)

With such epistolary conduct the threat is implied. When congresspeople write a complaint like this, the “gun under the table” is understood. They can make laws or use existing laws — antitrust laws or 10,000 other possibilities in the kit bag of the federal leviathan — to pummel speech-enablers.

On Monday, I noted next month’s scheduled congressional inquisition of Twitter, Facebook and Google CEOs, the third such “hearing” in the last five months. That alone imposes a punishment of sorts . . . and to what purpose?

As Glen Greenwald cogently points out: “Congress violates the First Amendment when it attempts to require private companies to impose viewpoint-based speech restrictions which the government itself would be constitutionally barred from imposing.”

Congressmen who oppose what Eshoo and McNerney are doing should take this attack on our right to speak very, very seriously. Government must not silence voices, directly or indirectly. If there’s a battle to pick in defense of our freedom, this is it.

Freedom of speech is our first, last, and most important defense against tyranny. Tyrants have never been fans. We must be. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* It reminds me of President Trump complaining on Twitter about “Fake News out of NBC and the Networks” and asking

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