Tag Archives: free speech

Facebook Collusion?

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According to the latest installment of Email Revelations, Facebook—i.e., Mark Zuckerberg, since he owns an outright majority of the voting shares of his Facebook (and its reincarnation, Meta)—responded to pressure from the White House (which can only mean President Joe Biden (D), since he’s the White House guy in charge) rather meekly (IMNSHO).

Facebook told an official at the Biden White House in March 2021 that the Big Tech company took action against the “virality” of “often-true content” regarding the COVID-19 vaccines, in addition to suppressed misinformation about the shots.

Zuckerberg, via his (identity redacted) staffer:

As you know, in addition to removing vaccine misinformation, we have been focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable information. This is often-true content, which we allow at the post level because it is important for people to be able to discuss both their personal experiences and concerns about the vaccine, but it can be framed as sensation, alarmist, or shocking.

Can be framed as…. By whom, exactly? Apparently by Zuckerberg and his minions.

Is Zuckerberg an abject coward, then, caving to unenforceable “pressure,” or is he all-in with the Progressive-Democrats and their demand to control speech?

I write, you decide.

Go Figure

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The Republican-led House of Representatives is setting up a select committee to investigate Biden administration pressure on and collusion with (yes, both) Big Tech to suppress or outright censor speech of which Biden-ites disapproved, a suppression/censorship that primarily affected Republicans and Conservatives.

President Joe Biden (D) demurs.

“House Republicans continue to focus on launching partisan political stunts,” said spokesman Ian Sams, “instead of joining the president to tackle the issues the American people care about most like inflation.”

Yet when the Progressive-Democratic Party Congressmen “investigated” the Trump administration and former President Donald Trump (R) himself throughout his four years in office, that was all on the up-and-up.

Go figure.

More Censorship

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Meta, the owner of Facebook, is expanding its censorship practice.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said Monday that they will be taking down posts that support the raids of Brazilian government buildings by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

And it was preplanned:

“In advance of the election, we designated Brazil as a temporary high-risk location and have been removing content calling for people to take up arms or forcibly invade Congress, the Presidential palace and other federal buildings,” a spokesperson for Meta said in a statement reported by Reuters.
“We are also designating this as a violating event, which means we will remove content that supports or praises these actions,” the statement continued. “We are actively following the situation and will continue removing content that violates our policies.

All because Mark Zuckerberg disapproves of opinions different from his own. And he’s proud of his censorship.

The correct answer to distasteful, even despicable, rhetoric—Facebook posts or otherwise—is answering rhetoric that makes the differing case. Merely censoring, deleting, canceling rhetoric is either laziness or cowardice. Or both.

Show Me the Logs

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One of the latest Twitter Files batch demonstrated that Old Twitter and the FBI colluded to suppress FBI-disparaged information and that the FBI paid Old Twitter’s costs in the doing to the tune of more than $3.4 million dollars. The Twitter File release carried, among other things, email exchanges between FBI worthies and then-Twitter functionaries talking about the exchanges and the payment for the quid pro quo.

Of course the FBI, in its best wide-eyed innocent Dondi impression, denies any such kind of interaction.

We are providing it [the input] so that they can take whatever action they deem appropriate under their terms of service to protect their platform and protect their customers, but we never direct or ask them to take action[.]

An example of the FBI’s “input:”

Hello Twitter contacts, FBI San Francisco is notifying you of the below accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy[.]

However, FBI officials insist

We did no [sic] request anything of the sort.
We focus on activities attributed to foreign actors, not on the content or narrative[.]

But for the non-requests, Old Twitter functionaries bragged about the payments.

Jim [then-Deputy General Counsel Baker], FYI, in 2019 SCALE instituted a reimbursement program for our legal process response from the FBI. Prior to the start of the program, Twitter chose not to collect under this statutory right of reimbursement for the time spent processing requests from the FBI. I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!

This, too, FBI officials…demurred from.

…[the payment was just] reasonable costs and expenses associated with their response to a legal process…for complying with legal requests, and a standard procedure.
…
We don’t just reimburse Twitter….

Well then, FBI Director Chris Wray. Show us the logs. Show us the notes taken by the FBI agents in their conversations with Twitter functionaries. Show us the accounting books.

Some Thoughts

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Donald Trump Jr has posted some ideas for maintaining/protecting the freedom of speech of us American citizens that his father, former President Donald Trump (R) has for 2024. He’s on the right track….

I have some thoughts on some of them.

Regarding Section 230: Social media—Twitter, Facebook, Alphabet—have made themselves into the public square, and with their collusion with the Federal government to censor speech, they’ve made themselves arms of that same Federal government. That’s two ways, each of which alone is determinative, in which social media have demonstrated their lack of need and forfeited their “right” to protection under Section 230.

Regarding Federal dollars going to academic institutions or programs that don’t live and breathe free speech—especially unpopular speech: Not a single copper penny should be going to those things. If they’re going to censor Americans, they need to do it on their own coin.

Regarding the 7-year cooling off period for intel-related folks: Go broader. Lift the security clearances for all government officials as soon as they leave office, with this exception: the President, Vice President, Cabinet Secretaries, and Agency heads should be allowed to keep their clearances for 90 days, with no possibility of an extension, in order to arrange their library/library-like affairs.

Regarding a Digital Bill of Rights: No. Not at all. Our rights do not come from government; they come from our Creator, as our Declaration of Independence acknowledged and still acknowledges. In addition to that, we already have a Bill of Rights; it’s written into our Constitution. That Bill of Rights also is technology agnostic; digital matters are subsumed into it. Declaring an additional set specifically for digital matters, apart from my just above objection, would only dilute that extant and much more powerful set of Rights.