Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and controlling shareholder of his Facebook, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday. He said that

his company often must decide between “difficult trade-offs” when it comes to content moderation, and that he believes “some of these trade-offs would be better made through a democratic process.”

Two things on that. One is his stuff about trade-offs via a democratic process. What democratic process he posited is unclear. Would it be one where all of his employees would do the voting? One where all of his censors fact checkers/fact checker overseers would do the voting? There’d plainly be nothing democratic about that since his employees, including his checkers, are overwhelmingly far left, and the press outlets he sometimes uses are nearly as far left.

The larger thing, though, is Zuckerberg’s claimed difficult trade-offs while moderating content. This is Zuckerberg’s cynically offered false premise: there’s no need to moderate content on his facility. Not if he wants to continue as a pipeline rather than a publisher.

For instance, Zuckerberg also testified in that hearing that he has Facebook vetting political ads for “essential accuracy.” This is censoring of political speech, and it’s deeply insulting both to the political candidates involved and to the American voters viewing the ads. The opponent being targeted by a political ad is fully capable of responding for himself, and in his own way, to an ad. He does not need, not by a long shot, Zuckerberg or any of his minions to speak for him. It’s the same for American viewers of political ads. We do not need the Zuckerbergs of the world to speak for us. Nor are we so grindingly stupid—as he so clearly assumes we are—that we cannot evaluate for ourselves, and in our own ways, the ads that we see.

Clearly, though, Zuckerberg has every intention of continuing to censor speech, however he tries to obfuscate his intent.

One example of factchecking, by Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook censors factcheckers, is provided by Power Line.  It seems that Jon Hinderaker was impertinent enough to link to his Power Line post from his Facebook account, and that post rudely suggested that there might be voter fraud in the Wisconsin establishment.

Zuckerberg’s minions didn’t like that, so they had USA Today “fact check” the post, and based on that “news” outlet’s review, they added this to Hinderaker’s Facebook link.

Here’s Hinderaker’s rebuttal—on Power Line, since Zuckerberg brooks no argument with his priests—in pertinent part (RTWT):

The explanation given for Facebook’s “fact check” is that “Wisconsin turnout [is] in line with past elections, didn’t jump 22%.” But my Facebook post said nothing about Wisconsin turnout jumping by 22%. Neither did my Power Line post, which I doubt anyone from USA Today or Facebook actually read. According to Wisconsin officials, that state had a record turnout in 2020, not one that was “in line with past elections,” so Facebook’s “fact check” is blatantly false. Also, obviously, it doesn’t even attempt to deal with anything I wrote in my Power Line post, which, among other things, explained why some observers have made exaggerated claims relating to Wisconsin’s 2020 turnout numbers. Nor does it try to explain why there is something wrong with what I wrote on Facebook, which was that “the numbers suggest” that there was major voter fraud in Wisconsin–a claim that, as far as I know, stands unrebutted.

Hinderaker is polite and says Zuckerberg’s (Hinderaker also says “Facebook,” but Zuckerberg is the MFWIC, not only in name, but with controlling share ownership) fact check is false. I have no such compunction: Zuckerberg, through his censors, is straight up lying.

Zuckerberg no longer runs a pipeline and so that operation no longer falls within the protections of the 1996 Communications Decency Act‘s Section 230. Here’s what Section 230 does in this context:

…protects social media platforms from liability for “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”

It’s that “otherwise objectionable” bit that’s the problem (and so is “harassing” in this context). That’s where political speech is getting censored by Zuckerberg. From that, he’s made his operation a publisher (of opinion and, in too many cases, lies; although the latter is neither here nor there regarding Section 230), and so either his Facebook needs to be reclassified and removed from within Section 230, or Section 230 needs to be corrected to remove “otherwise objectionable” or anything like it from the liability protection clauses and the definition of “harassing” tightened a very great deal. Afterall, newspapers don’t get those protections; neither should Zuckerberg’s publisher.

Full stop.