Throttling free speech is not the way to fix Facebook and other social media | TheHill – The Hill

Caution: Free Speech May Be Hazardous to Your Health. Such a rewording of theoriginal 1965 warningon tobacco products could soon appear on social media platforms, if a Senate hearing this week is any indicator. Listening toformer Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, senators decried how Facebook is literally killing people by not censoring content, and Haugen proposed a regulatory board to protect the public.

But before we embrace a new ministry of information model to protect us from dangerous viewpoints, we may want to consider what we would lose in this Faustian free-speech bargain.

Warnings over the addiction and unhealthy content of the internet have been building into a movement for years.In July,President BidenJoe BidenMajority of Americans concerned about cyberattacks on critical groups: poll Labor secretary says 194K jobs added in September was 'not the best number' Biden task force has reunited 52 families separated under Trump: report MORE slammed Big Tech companies for killing people by failing to engage in even greater censorship of free speech on issues related to the pandemic.On Tuesday, many senators were enthralled by Haugens testimony because they, too, have long called for greater regulation or censorship. It all began reasonably enough over concerns about violent speech, and then expanded to exploitative speech. However, it continued to expand even further as the regulation of speech became an insatiable appetite for silencing opposing views.

In recent hearings with social media giants, members like Sen. Chris CoonsChris Andrew CoonsDemocratic lawmakers, Yellen defend Biden on the economy Sunday shows - Scalise won't say if election was stolen under questioning from Fox's Chris Wallace Democrat on controversial Schumer speech: Timing 'may not have been the best' MORE (D-Del.) were critical of limiting censorship to areas like election fraud and insteaddemanded censorship of disinformation on climate changeand other subjects. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has repeatedly called for robust content modification to remove untrue or misleading information.

Haugen lashed out at what she said was the knowing harm committed against people, particularly children, byexposing them todisinformation or unhealthy views. Haugen wants the company to remove toxic content and change algorithms to make such sites less visible. She complained that sites with a high engagement rate are more likely to be favored in searches. However, the problem is that sites deemed false or harmful are too popular. Haugen said that artificially removing likes is not enough because the popularity or interest in some sites will still push them to the top of searches.

It was a familiar objection. Just the week before,Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth WarrenBuilding back better by investing in workers and communities Throttling free speech is not the way to fix Facebook and other social media Senate poised to stave off debt crisis MORE (D-Mass.) called for Amazon to steer readers to true books on climate change.Her objection was that the popularity of misleading books was pushing them to the top of searches, and she wants the algorithms changed to help readers pick what she considers to be healthier choices meaning, more in line with her views.

Similarly, Haugens solution seems to be well, her:Right now, the only people in the world who are trained to analyze these experiments, to understand what is happening inside there needs to be a regulatory home where someone like me could do a tour of duty afterworking at a place like [Facebook],and have a place to work on things like regulation. Censorship programs always begin with politicians and bureaucrats who in their own minds have the benefit of knowing what is true and the ability to protect the rest of us from our harmful thoughts.

Ironically, I have long been a critic of social media companies for their rapid expansion of censorship, including the silencing ofpolitical critics,public health expertsandpro-democracy movementsat the behest of foreign governments like China and Russia. I am unabashedly aninternet originalistwho favors an open, free forum for people to exchange ideas and viewpoints allowing free speech to be its own disinfectant of bad speech.

Facebook has been running a slick campaignto persuade people to embrace corporate censorship.Yet, now, even the Facebook censors are being denounced as too passive in the face of runaway free speech. The focus is on the algorithms used to remove content or, as with Haugen and Warren, used to flag or promote popular sites.

Haugen describes her approach as a non-content-based solution but it is clearly not that.She objects to algorithms like downstream MSI which tracks traffic and pushes postings based on past likes or comments. Asexplained by one site, it is based on their ability to engage users, not necessarily its usefulness or truthfulness.Of course, the objection to those un-useful sites is their content and claimed harm.

Like Warren, Haugen is calling for what I have criticized as enlightened algorithms to protect us from our own bad choices.Our digital sentinels are non-content-based but will magically remove bad content to prevent unhealthy choices.

There is no question that the internet is fueling an epidemic of eating disorders and other great social problems. The solution, however, is not to create regulatory boards or to reduce free speech. Europe has long deployed such oversight boards inremoving what it considers harmful stereotypesfrom advertising andbarring images of honey or chips but the results have been underwhelming at best.

It is no accident that authoritarian countries have long wanted such regulation, since free speech is a threat to their power. Now, we also have U.S. academics writing that China was right all along about censorship, and public officials demanding more power to censor further. We have lost faith in free speech, and we are being told to put our faith into algorithmic guardians.

We can confront our problems more effectively by using good speech to overcome bad speech. When it comes to minors, we can use parents to protect their children by increasing parental controls over internet access; we can help parents with more or better programs and resources for mental illnesses. Of course, it is hard to advocate for restraint when the image of an anorexic child is juxtaposed against the abstract concept of free speech. However, that is the sirens call of censorship: Protecting that child by reducing her free-speech rights is no solution for her but it is a solution for many who want more control over opposing views.

Free speech is not some six-post-a-day addiction that should be cured with algorithmic patches. There is no such thing as a content-neutral algorithm that removes only harmful disinformation because behind each of those enlightened algorithms are people who are throttling speech according to what they deem to be harmful thoughts or viewpoints.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates on Twitter@JonathanTurley.

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Throttling free speech is not the way to fix Facebook and other social media | TheHill - The Hill