From The Wall Street Journal:
Call 2018 the “Year of Deplatforming.” The internet was once celebrated for allowing fresh new voices to escape the control of gatekeepers. But this year, the internet giants decided to slam the gates on a number of people and ideas they don’t like. If you rely on someone else’s platform to express unpopular ideas, especially ideas on the right, you’re now at risk. This raises troubling questions, not only for free speech but for the future of American politics and media.
The most famous victim of deplatforming is, not coincidentally, the least popular: Alex Jones, the radio host known for promoting outrageous conspiracy theories about everything from vaccinations to the Sandy Hook massacre. In a concerted action earlier this month aimed at loosely defined “hate speech,” Facebook , Apple , Spotify and YouTube removed from their services most of the material by Mr. Jones and his InfoWars network.Twitter recently followed suit with a seven-day suspension.
Apple cited its “terms of use” in removing InfoWars from its iTunes podcast listings but couldn’t explain why it didn’t remove the InfoWars app, which shares the same content, from its App Store. YouTube made general reference to its “terms of service and community guidelines,” but didn’t say what Mr. Jones had done wrong. Facebook’s reasons were similarly vague.
Their evasiveness isn’t hard to explain. After all, Mr. Jones isn’t doing anything different from what he has been doing for years. The real reason for his removal is that technology companies don’t like his views and have come under increasing pressure to deny him the use of their platforms.
. . . .
This week, Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes was suspended from Twitter along with his far-right Proud Boys organization, who call themselves “Western chauvinists,” though they say they oppose white supremacy. Twitter doesn’t like them, and it doesn’t like their politics. But even a mainstream conservative figure like radio host and author Dennis Prager has complained that YouTube placed age restrictions on some of the videos he produced. Facebook blocked an advertisement for Republican Congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng, ostensibly because her video mentioned the Cambodian genocide, which her family survived. Microsoft even threatened to shut down the web services used by conservative Twitter-competitor Gab because a single user on the network had posted anti-Semitic content.
If internet megaplatforms like YouTube and Facebook were publishers, none of this would be especially problematic. One of the essential duties of a publisher is deciding what to publish and what not to publish. The Supreme Court has even held, in Miami Herald v. Tornillo (1974), that the law can’t compel newspapers to print replies to their articles, because it would interfere with their choice of what to publish.
But internet platforms don’t want to be treated as publishers, because publishers are also responsible for their decisions. If a newspaper publishes a libelous story, it can be sued. If it infringes someone’s copyright, it can be held liable for damages. And everything it chooses to publish or not to publish is a reflection on its reputation.
Today, the big internet companies are treated not as publishers but as conduits—tools that other people use to spread their own ideas. That’s why the “safe harbor provision” of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, a landmark in internet regulation, states that platforms aren’t legally responsible for what other people publish on their sites. The law was originally intended to protect things like newspaper comment sections, but its application has become very broad, encompassing virtually all of the content on social media and sharing sites.
Now these companies are trying to have it both ways. They take advantage of the fact that they are not publishers to escape responsibility for the endless amounts of problematic material on their sites, from libel to revenge porn. But at the same time, they are increasingly acting like publishers in deciding which views and people are permitted on their platforms and which are not. As a narrow matter of First Amendment law, what these companies are doing will probably pass muster, unless some federal court decides, as in Marsh v. Alabama (1946), that their platforms are functionally equivalent to “company towns,” where the public square is privately owned.
. . . .
The notion that Silicon Valley megabillionaires are actively limiting what ordinary Americans can talk and write about is likely to produce a backlash. The tech industry’s image has already suffered over revelations about Facebook’s experiments aimed at manipulating users’ newsfeeds to test their emotional states, as well as various cases of invasion of privacy and data mishandling. Twenty years ago, most Americans saw Silicon Valley as liberating; now it seems to have gone from the hammer-wielding woman in that famous “1984” Apple commercial to the Big Brother figure up on the screen.
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal
ISPs are also trying to have it both ways (“we’re just the pipes” when it comes to liability, but still wanting to control what people are allowed to do the rest of the time)
In both cases, I think the answer is the same:
Force them to choose which set of rules they want
1. they can control the content and are liable for anything they allow
2. they do not control the content and have immunity
as for people posting illegal things, the answer isn’t to get the service to take it down, but rather to prosecute violators. If the government isn’t willing to do so, then they shouldn’t be taken down either.
Now, I’ll admit that this doesn’t solve the problem of things that are legal in one place an illegal in others. But neither does the current takedown pproach.
Arbitrary squelching invites regulation, lawsuits and backlash. Especially in organizations as big and powerful as facebook, twitter, google, etc…
Enforcing clear and public guidelines, universally, that’s the line they must walk. Not sure the ideology at the various social media giants allows for that level of fairness.
Not saying I’d do any better. I just think it’s obvious what the best business move is.
“When Digital Platforms Become Censors”
When have they ever ‘not’ been? Though I’ll admit some are getting so one-sided it’ll do you more harm than good to listen to/believe anything they say.
Heck, TPG looks at what’s out there and comments sent in and decides what to put on his page and he decides who can and can’t post comments. That there is censorship! But we don’t seem to mind – do we? 😉
Anyone can have a blog. You don’t like what PG puts on his, start your own.
Not anyone can just set up a Facebook or a Twitter. Those companies started out as gateways and began acting as gatekeepers, and that is the entire problem.
Sorry, maybe my ‘devil’s advocate’ came through too well for you.
I like seeing what PG puts up, otherwise I wouldn’t bother with it. And PG seems to have picked up on my tone because he bothered to post it.
Anyone can set up another ‘be-a-twit’ or ‘face-palm’, there was myspace and yehaa groups and all sorts of sites long before those two – and in time others will replace them.
And each and every one of them will censor as they like. And they will change as they age, if you don’t like the changes you are free to move on – as many of us are.
And you can’t use a law to tell a company what they can/can’t/must allow – anymore that you can make a law forcing people to read what you think they must.
This one is simple. Amend the law so that these internet platforms don’t get the benefit of being protected as “conduits” if they censor anything other than illegal behavior. They can choose which way they want to jump.
So Facebook and YouTube should become copies of pornhub? Because far more porn is kept off there by there terms of service than political stuff.
Laws against obscenity are still on the books. Laws against political speech are not only nonexistent but per se unconstitutional.
Laws against obscenity don’t cover almost anything on sites like pornhub or they would be shutdown already. Playboy and Hustler for examine were able to skirt those laws, so their content would be fine on Facebook?
The reason sites like pornhub are not shut down is not that the law doesn’t cover them, but that the authorities refuse to prosecute.
Playboy and Hustler got round the law by (ostensibly) being available only to persons over the age of 18. Facebook and Twitter haven’t got that fig leaf.
Amend the law so that these internet platforms don’t get the benefit of being protected as “conduits” if they censor anything other than illegal behavior.
Eliminating only the illegal stuff paves the way to a heckler’s veto.
A heckler’s veto is what they have now. Every time some activist group opens its yap, Facebook and Twitter knuckle under and censor the people the activists find offensive.
Sure. And let anything in that is not illegal, and the hecklers have another tool. They just post the alphabet 1,000 times. (Randomize the letters each time if duplicate posts are not allowed.)
The problem I have is this, I would like these companies to let everyone express their ideas and views, yes, even the detestable ones. Free Speech means sometimes you’re offended. However, the other side of the coin is… they’re private companies. They can do what they want as long as they don’t break the law. Personally, I think the mistakes all these companies (Amazon included) are making is making them ripe for a competitor to step in and clean up.
Counterprogramming has been spectacularly profitable for FOXNEWS.
Ah, but you see, they want to be able to do what they want even if it DOES break the law. That is the central problem here. A newspaper can print whatever they want – but is subject to penalties if they print something that is either against criminal law (such as a call to racial violence), or has civil libel consequences (a demonstrable lie about a person or organization). Otherwise, they can gush about the left and vilify the right (or vice-versa) according to the predominant ideology in the newsroom. They can refuse to print any rebuttal to their ideology.
Silicon Valley wants to be able to “print” calls by Antifa for the overthrow of the US – while simultaneously banning videos that factually point out the flaws of socialism (and its death toll over the years). That makes them a publisher, not a conduit – and liable for damage caused by those illegal and/or libelous views they do “print.”
I’d like to point out that you should get your news from more than one source. YouTube has demonitized and hidden many left leaning channels like Secular Talk, The David Packman show and others. Twitter has banned several left leaning people over jokes recently. That doesn’t make the same news as Alex Jones but these companies are reducing liabilities across the spectrum.
A couple months ago they went after weed, gun and steroid channels for example on YouTube.
I agree with Jeff above. Conservatives should follow the example of Fox News and tap into the over 100 million potential users in the US alone instead of complaining that only they are being targeted(because they clearly aren’t). There’s plenty of billionaires on either side that could setup a platform in a few months if they tried.
There’s plenty of billionaires on either side that could setup a platform in a few months if they tried.
Network effect makes that pretty much impossible. There are two reasons Gab has been a miserable failure, and only one of them is that Microsoft decided to make an example of them. The other is that nearly everyone who might want their service is already on Twitter, and there is no incentive to switch.
It hurts if they are trying to exactly duplicate something, but if there is a new utility that people want in it then it can thrive. Both Instagram and Snapchat grew despite YouTube and Facebook being giants.
We’ve seen a new major social media, or major social app like Tinder, every two years in recent history. It takes a while for them to get widespread but each reached millions.
And that doesn’t take into account the ability of celebrity to drive people to something. If Trump and someone like Sean Hannity advertised a new platform they could get a million users in a few weeks.
That’s the problem. Gab is trying to exactly duplicate Twitter, and unless you are one of those who have been censored, there is no particular value to switching over.
We do indeed see a new social media platform every couple of years – and then they generally get taken over by Facebook or Alphabet and rolled into the would-be censors’ stable. What we never see is a successful copy of something that has already been done, and that’s all Gab ever pretended to be.
Surely the incentive is that you can read things that you can’t read on Twitter, because Those people have been blocked.
Besides, you’re suggesting that there is an either or dynamic in place but in reality, multiple social networks coexist.
It seems like there are many people who believe that Twitter is censoring Conservatives, so I’m surprised that gab doesn’t have more followers.
First they would have to know it exists.
I have a Gab account, and I’ve logged in a few times. I stopped doing so because of a few reasons:
1. At the time, at least, some of the basic features still didn’t work (like making your main page look how you wanted
2. There was a bigger character limit than Twitter, but everyone seemed to be using the extra space only to add fifty billion stupid hashtags
3. No one who interested me was on Gab
4. Everyone who was on Gab appeared to be on there solely to rant about politics. As someone who kind of hates politics, this means there wasn’t much for me there.
I certainly like the idea of a Twitter-like site that doesn’t try to censor people, but Gab ended up way, way too niche to hold any interest for me.
Any such service needs to bill itself at least semi-credibly as “fair and balanced”, which FOX did and for a while actually was (pre-2000). They still maintain a tinge of “fairness” by grilling leftists regularly and featuring token centrists.
A service billing itself solely as conservative won’t have as much of a reach.
A good example of what outright extreme identification does is MSNBC. When it was co-run by Microsoft and NBC it was scrupulously neutral, not even centrist. Virtually no spin.
Very popular.
Once NBC took over so did spin and eventually they adding Identity sections and the revamps began as audience declined. They’re not into the third in two years and it looks nothing like the original.
On the other hand, MSN news is on the rise solely as an aggregator by linking and highlighting articles from existing sources. The linked sources lean most frequently to the left but they run daily polls and the responses there run somewhat right of center. There range of sources runs from clearly leftist mouthpieces like THE HILL and VOX to FOX. The tech, science, and business sections for the most part don’t push political agendas so most of the extreme left is excluded along with the extreme right.
Not exactly neutral but it is about as neutral as seems possible in today’s environment. Some of the extreme rhetoric is unavoidable, I suppose, when the politics of rage have so many public figures, like governors and congressfolk, making injudicious statements and calls to action.
Polarization is ongoing and the middle is getting squeezed, much to the delight of hostile powers.