Tag: Twitter

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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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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

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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Misinformed … or Worse?

Google, Twitter, Facebook, Congress, censorship, free speech

“For the third time in less than five months,” journalist Glenn Greenwald writes at Substack, “the U.S. Congress has summoned the CEOs of social media companies to appear before them, with the explicit intent to pressure and coerce them to censor more content from their platforms. On March 25, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will interrogate Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebooks’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai at a hearing …”

A joint statement by Democrat committee and subcommittee chairs declares: “This hearing will continue the Committee’s work of holding online platforms accountable for the growing rise of misinformation and disinformation.”

Wait — the constitutional authority of Congress does not stretch to holding social media “accountable” for political speech. The First Amendment clearly states that “Congress shall make no [such] law …”

And what Congress is forbidden to do, it cannot threaten and intimidate private companies into doing, instead.

“For the same reasons that the Constitution prohibits the government from dictating what information we can see and read … ‚” Greenwald points out, “it also prohibits the government from using its immense authority to coerce private actors into censoring on its behalf.”

Consider longtime Hillary Clinton aide Jennifer Palmieri’s response to President Trump’s banning by Twitter and Facebook: “It has not escaped my attention that the day social media companies decided there actually IS more they could do to police Trump’s destructive behavior was the same day they learned Democrats would chair all the congressional committees that oversee them.”

Many on the left — and even some libertarians — continue to argue that Congress plays no role in the censorship being carried out by these private Tech Giants. 

They are mistaken — whether because misinformed or disinformed, we can leave to another day.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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First Amendment rights social media

Our Info War

Michael Rectenwald

“Do not close your Facebook or Twitter accounts,” wrote Michael Rectenwald a few days ago.

But I already closed my Twitter!

“Do not give up the geography you have and the connections you’ve made within those spaces. Instead, subvert from within.”

Still, I never liked Twitter. It seems a poisonous atmosphere of too much snark, virtue signaling, mobbing, and worse.

“As of now, there are no alternatives. Parler will be shut down by Amazon within hours. It will also be shut out of Apple and Android vis-​a-​vis Apple Store and Google Play.”

I hopped on Parler, when it got attacked. With the outages, etc., it is impossible to use. 

“Gab is a digital silo or ghetto that contains and isolates deviationism.”

And former leftist professor Rectenwald — author of the books Springtime for Snowflakes, The Google Archipelago, and Beyond Woke, as well as a novel, Thought Criminal — means “deviationism” in an entirely good way.

“MeWe has already succumbed to the oligarchical censors,” he informs.

“Instead, keep the beach heads that we have and spread out. Don’t give up the connections. We must retain the network of thought deviationism .… Read this article and you’ll understand why it’s not as simple as you think,” linking to a Daniel Greenfield essay on Frontpage, “Parler and the Problem of Escaping Internet Censorship” (January 8, 2021).

The problem is oligopoly, argues Greenfield, since five big corporations “control the mobile ecosystem and can shut down an app like Parler anytime they please.… an increasingly small interconnected network of companies … can act in concert to suppress anyone or anything they don’t like.”

And what role does the federal government play? It applies pressure by threats at the top end (Nancy Pelosi, et al.) and who-​knows-​what at the Deep End (the CIA and other intel agencies, which have working arrangements with all major tech companies, including Apple).

All the more reason for you to (ahem) SUBSCRIBE for email service on ThisIsCommonSense​.org, if you haven’t already. Email is harder to control. 

And we have a lot of work to do, to fight back.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people

Twitter’s Election Interference

Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Twitter, censorship,

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube … they sucked us in by pretending to be non-​biased platforms for everybody, yet now suppress content that chiefly rubs against one set of clients, supporters of the Democratic Party.

The current case regards the water-​damaged computer of (reportedly) Hunter Biden, the content of which reached the New York Post by way of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. But the bigger story is that Twitter won’t allow links to the Post’s reporting, going so far as to lock the Post’s primary account; Facebook has also tried to suppress the story. 

Now it’s blowing up everywhere.

It’s bad for the Bidens: emails suggest the former Vice-​President played more of a role than previously claimed in what has always looked improper — no, corrupt — except to most mainstream media.*

No wonder, then, that we hear calls for government regulation of social media.

Shivers down my spine.

But what I have not heard? Giving Democrats a dish of what they love: federal campaign finance law.

Does not social media’s clearly uneven content suppression amount to material support for one set of political candidates over others? Why not stick Democrats with their own beloved regime?

But great minds think alike: while proofreading the above, I found a tweet by Lee Spieckerman, a Texas media specialist: “The @TheJusticeDept should immediately begin investigating @jack [Twitter’s CEO] for illegal in-​kind campaign contribution to @JoeBiden.”

While I oppose campaign finance regulation, we must not** let such regulations only be used by one side against the other. 

Yet maybe if we make the threat, social media will come to its senses, and Democrats will see the error of McCain-Feingold.

Too crazy? Or the right amount of 2020 crazy?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* A state-​connected Chinese bank and a well-​connected Russian woman lathered Hunter up with millions and billions of dollars for only one plausible reason: his father’s position in our government. Hunter Biden joined that Ukrainian oil company board after Joe Biden became point-​man for our country’s Ukrainian policy.

 ** In the past, I have addressed this notion of applying bad regulations equally, including campaign finance laws specifically.

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general freedom ideological culture

Twitter Gulag?

Gulag, twitter,

An old Soviet-​phrase — “ne chital, no osuzhdayu” (“didn’t read, but disapprove”) — seems as apt now as ever. Why? Because Americans today have revived the “Soviet mentality,” according to Izabella Tabarovsky, writing at Tablet. 

Ms. Tabarovsky, a researcher with the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, explains that “[c]ollective demonizations of prominent cultural figures were an integral part of the Soviet culture of denunciation that pervaded every workplace and apartment building.”

Jobs lost, careers ruined, people socially disgraced — for “social media gaffes or old teenage behavior” — this is not just a Soviet mania, for Twitter mobs are on the rampage against those they deem “to be deplorable and unforgivable.” 

The difference between current mobbing and Soviet experience, though, is stark: the government does not seem to be in charge, and there are no real gulags to be sent to — as of yet.

Today’s mobbing behavior, on and off Twitter, appears spontaneous and “systemic,” not organizational — more Crucible-like than 1984-ish. 

Nevertheless, this is dangerous stuff. “The practice of collective condemnation feels like an assertion of a culture that ultimately tramples on the individual and creates an oppressive society,” Tabarovsky concludes, insisting that “the failure of institutions and individuals to stand up to mob rule is no longer an option we can afford.”

She’s right. Twitter-​mobbing may be ugly, but it is more than that: it is obviously backed by force — witness the current riots; look at the policy agendas of the “politically correct” — and, unless stopped culturally it will have to be stopped in the realm of (ugh) politics and government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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