Tag Archives: free speech

It’s a Start

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A coalition of 10 States, led by Texas, has filed an amicus brief in the 11th Circuit Appellate Court supporting Florida’s law requiring Big Tech to

consistently apply content-moderation practices and disclosures to affected users.

The Texas law, in particular and on which Florida’s law was modeled, specifies that

…social media sites in question must…disclose their content management and moderation policies and create a complaint and appeals process. The new law also prohibits email service providers from impeding the transmission of email messages based on content.

So far, so good for the two laws, but not far enough for either.

These platforms’ moderation teams also must be required to advise the poster/communicator, in advance of any adverse action, that the team is contemplating such action. In that advance notice, the moderation teams must advise the poster/communicator which platform criterion or set of criteria that the moderation team believes is being violated, and how—in concrete, measurable terms—the team believes that violation(s) is occurring.

For instance, in the case of “might offend some,” that notice must specify the group or groups the team believes might be offended and how that offense might occur—vis., if the potential offense is along the lines non-inclusiveness, the team must specify precisely how the non-inclusion is believed to be occurring.

The team also must suggest alternative phrasings (yes, plural) and for each alternative explain how the team’s suggestion conveys the same message as the original.

This advance notice also must provide the name and business contact data of the moderation team lead and the name and business contact data of the platform Director or Senior Vice President overseeing the platform’s moderation function.

The appeal itself must go to an independent arbitration board agreeable to both the poster/communicator and the platform and at the platform’s sole expense.

Thought Police

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They’re metastasizing into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a guide to “inclusive language” in order to promote “health equity” and “inclusive communication.”

For instance, their “Corrections & Detentions” section “suggests”

replacing terms such as “Inmate,” “Prisoner,” “Convict/ex-convict,” and “Criminal” with terms such as “People/persons,” “Persons in pre-trial or with charge,” “Persons on parole or probation,” or “People in immigration detention facilities.”

The problem with euphemisms, though, is that they mean precisely the same as the word they’re intended to replace. Persons on parole or probation still are criminals. That’s the status of folks on parole or probation—they’re still criminals, felons, until they complete their sentences. People in immigration detention facilities remain illegal aliens—that’s why they’re being detained.

The substitutes may soften the language in a misguided attempt to disguise or obfuscate the facts, but that’s only a temporary condition, and the frankness of the underlying meaning ultimately (and quickly) comes through. That’s why there’s a constant search for euphemisms.

The problem with government agents—the men and women who populate government agencies—being the ones pushing for euphemisms is that their push becomes mandates, and government mandates are nothing more than restrictions on free speech, limits on one of our most basic individual liberties. When government agents presume to dictate how we must term concepts, they’re dictating how we must think about them.

Even the worthies in government know that. Which is maybe why they’re making their push.

Utterly Illegal

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And the Progressive-Democrats don’t care. They have the power, so they don’t need any stinking authority, and they’re going ahead: with censorship of what average Americans are allowed to say, even allowed to know.

The White House announced their efforts with Facebook to take aggressive action on problematic social media posts. The administration said they would work to flag and censor anything they deemed to be disinformation about COVID-19.

Biden’s Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy:

We expect more from our technology companies. We’re asking them to operate with greater transparency and accountability. We are asking them to monitor misinformation more closely.

Biden himself, through his Press Secretary, Jen Psaki:

“There are also proposed changes we have made to social media platforms, including Facebook….

And

We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation[.]

And overt spying on private citizens’ personal communications to facilitate the censorship, per the Progressive-Democratic Party’s Democratic National Committee:

…plans to work with SMS carriers to monitor text messages and dispel misinformation about vaccines.
“If you send a text message to a friend or to a family member or to whoever and it includes whatever they deem as misinformation that somehow you’re going to get a message on your phone from the government,” David Rubin of the Rubin Report.

And the threat, from none other than President Joe Biden (D):

Mr Biden was asked what his message was to social media platforms when it came to Covid-19 disinformation.
“They’re killing people,” he said. “Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and that—and they’re killing people.”

Never mind that the censorship is a blatant violation of our 1st Amendment and of long-standing and myriad case law:

As recently as 2019, the Supreme Court reasoned “‘a private entity can qualify as a state actor,’ subject to First Amendment protections….” Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck (2019) …;
“When the private entity performs a traditional, exclusive public function,” Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co. (1974);
“When the government compels the private entity to take a particular action,” Blum v. Yaretsky, (1982);
“When the government acts jointly with the private entity.” Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co. (1982).

The government doesn’t get to avoid censorship by farming out its censoring to third parties.

And there’s this: it’s well established in Civil Rights law and Supreme Court rulings that private enterprises that are public accommodations (of which diners are a canonical example) may not discriminate, under the 14th Amendment, on the basis of race. It’s an easy extension of that “may not discriminate” to include 1st Amendment speech, and it’s quite clear that Facebook et al., have become, if they weren’t created as, public accommodations.

Us average Americans need to keep this blatant disregard for our Constitution firmly in mind in November 2022.

 

H/t Grim’s Hall

More Big Tech Censorship

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This time, perpetrated by Sundar Pichai and his YouTube—which Pichai controls through his control of Alphabet and Google (the latter which is wholly owned by Alphabet) and through his Google’s ownership of YouTube.

Real America’s Voice has been suspended from YouTube for a week for posting an exclusive interview with former President Donald Trump in which he discusses the disputed 2020 presidential election.

This is an image of the YouTube notice RAV received and subsequently showed to Just the News:

The notice image is hard to read (try the right-click|open in new tab trick), YouTube claimed to RAV that the video included prohibited content that “advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election.”

Except that the video—the interview with former President Donald Trump (R)—did no such thing. It merely contained Trump’s claim of a fraudulent outcome of the 2020 election. There’s not a minim of fraud, errors, or glitches, widespread or not, in the fact of his claim. Some might—and many do—dispute Trump’s claim, but there’s nothing in the censored video that is false regarding the fact of Trump’s statements about the election or in RAV‘s recording and reporting of Trump’s statements.

Of course, Pichai knows this full well; he’s that bent on censoring speech of which he personally disapproves and over which he has the nakedly raw power to commit his censorship.

A Joke?

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President Joe Biden (D) was asked a question while he was playing around with an electric Ford F-150 truck, taking it for joy test drives around the parking lot of a Ford plant in Michigan.

Here’s the exchange.

Reporter: Mr President, can I ask you a quick question on Israel before you drive away since it’s so important?
Biden: No, you can’t. Not unless you get in front of the car as I step on it. I’m only teasing[.]

Only teasing?

This is part and parcel with his then-boss President Barack Obama’s (D) overt attack on journalists, arresting one, spying on another’s personal communications, spying on that one’s mother’s personal communications, attempting to blackball an entire news organization—all because they asked inconvenient questions.

This was no joke—Joe Biden was threatening a journalist because the man asked an inconvenient question.