Its a strange fact of history that critics began calling on Twitter to ban Donald Trump shortly after he was elected president and got what they wanted a few days before the end of his term. For four years, we talked about a ban why it was necessary, why it was impossible; how refusing showed that platforms were principled, how it showed they were hypocrites and just when there was nothing left to say, it happened. There were detailed justifications for the ban when it came (it was a state of emergency, the best among bad options, and so on), but the timing suggests a simpler logic. As long as Trump was president, platforms couldnt punish him. Once hed lost the election, he was fair game.

Twitters decision to ban Trump had a cascading effect: Facebook issued its own ban, then YouTube, then everyone else. The Trump-friendly social network Parler came under scrutiny, and the platforms host, Amazon Web Services, took a closer look at the violent threats that had spread on Parler in advance of the Capitol riot, ultimately deciding to drop the network entirely. Trump boasted about starting his own social network only to offer a short-lived series of online press releases. Journalists who shared the releases too eagerly were shamed for helping the disgraced president evade the ban, and social pressures made the screenshots less common. Soon, even Facebook ads showing Trump speeches drew criticism as a potential evasion of the ban.

The months since have perfectly illustrated the effectiveness of deplatforming. Once inescapable, the former president has all but disappeared from the daily discourse. He continues to hold rallies and make statements, but the only way to hear about them is to go to a rally in person or tune into fringe networks like OANN or NewsMax. Before the ban, there was real doubt about whether deplatforming a major political figure could work. After the ban, it is undeniable.

For the most part, platforms have avoided meaningful blowback for the decision, although theres been growing angst about it from the American right wing. If they can do this to Trump, the thinking goes, they can do it to anyone. Its entirely true. This is the dream of equal justice under the law: anyone who commits murder should be worried that theyll go to jail for it. There should be no one so powerful that they cant be kicked out of a restaurant if they start spitting in other peoples food. In this one difficult case, Twitter was able to live up to the ideal of equal justice. But as we look to the next 10 years of speech moderation, its hard not to be anxious about whether platforms can keep it up.

We tend to talk about moderation politics as something that happens between platforms and users (i.e., who gets banned and why), but the Trump debacle shows theres another side. Like all companies, social platforms have to worry about the politics of the countries they operate in. If companies end up on the wrong side of those politics, they could face regulatory blowback or get ejected from the country entirely. But moderation is politically toxic: it never makes friends, only enemies, even as it profoundly influences the political conversation. Increasingly, platforms are arranging their moderation systems to minimize that political fallout above all else.

The problem is much bigger than just Twitter and Trump. In India, Facebook has spent the last seven years in an increasingly fraught relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cultivating close ties with the countrys leader while violence against Indias Muslim minority continued to escalate. In Myanmar, a February coup forced Facebook to welcome groups it had previously counted as terrorists and suppress groups that mounted military opposition to the new regime.

Not surprisingly, both countries have flirted with an outright ban on Facebook, flexing moderation systems of their own. Modi has spoken openly about a ban, and India has less to lose from a ban than Facebook. The platform would drop 260 million users overnight, and it wouldnt take long for markets and investors to realize the implications. So when a post pushes the limits of whats acceptable, Facebook will usually make exceptions.

The starkest example of this dynamic was revealed by the Facebook Papers in October. In Vietnam, the company faced growing pressure from the ruling Communist Party to moderate against anti-state content essentially building the repressive values of the regime into its own moderation strategy. But when the issue came to a head, Facebook CEO (and now Meta CEO) Mark Zuckerberg personally directed the company to comply, saying it was more important to ensure our services remain available for millions of people who rely on them every day. Given the choice of protecting the independence of its moderation system or staying on the governments good side, Zuckerberg chose the easy way out.

There was a time when a country-wide blockade of Facebook would have been unthinkable. Civil society groups like Access Now have spent years trying to establish a norm against internet blackouts, arguing that they provide cover for human rights abuses. But Facebook is so toxic in US politics that its hard to imagine a president lobbying foreign countries on its behalf. When Myanmar instituted a temporary block in the wake of the countrys military coup, there were few objections.

These are ugly, difficult political shifts, and Facebook is playing an active role in them, just as much as national institutions like the press or the national guard. Facebook isnt pretending to be a neutral arbiter anymore, and for all the posturing of Facebooks Oversight Board a pseudo-independent body with authority over major moderation decisions there isnt any greater noble logic to the platforms choices. Theyre just trying to stay on the right side of the ruling party.

This kind of realpolitik isnt what deplatformers had in mind. The goal was to push Facebook and the others to take responsibility for their impact on the world. But instead of making Facebook and the other platforms more responsible, it has made them more unapologetic about the political realities. These are just corporations protecting themselves. Theres no longer any reason to pretend otherwise.

We often talk about tech companies as if theyre unprecedented, but the world has grappled with this kind of transnational corporate power before. If you want to stop Coca-Cola or United Fruit Company from killing union leaders, its not enough to pass laws in the US. You need an international standard of conduct, reaching beyond nation-specific concepts like probable cause or the first amendment.

For decades, a constellation of international activists has been building such a system, a body of voluntary transnational agreements generally referred to as international human rights law. The name is misleading in some ways since its less of a judicial system than a series of non-binding treaties agreeing to general principles: countries shouldnt discriminate on the basis of race or gender, they shouldnt use children as soldiers, they shouldnt torture people.

The language of the treaties is purposefully vague, and enforcement mostly consists of public shaming. (The 1987 Convention Against Torture didnt prevent the United States from embracing enhanced interrogation techniques, for example.) But you can see the beginnings of an international consensus there, nudging us towards a less oppressive and violent world.

For the more thoughtful critics of social media, this is the only system broad enough to truly rein in a company like Facebook. Jillian York, who dwells on the Facebook problem at length in her book Silicon Values, told me the only long-term fix to the troubles roiling India and the United States would be something on that scale. We need to be thinking about an international mechanism for holding these companies accountable to a standard, she told me.

Optimists might see the shift towards deplatforming and away from free speech extremism as a step in the right direction. Reddit-style speech libertarianism is very much an American concept, relying on the relatively unusual protections of the First Amendment. But rather than drifting towards an international consensus, York sees platforms as simply cut adrift, doing whatever fits the needs of their employees and users at a given moment. In this dispensation, there are few principles anchoring companies like Facebook and Twitter and few protections if they run astray.

Were now in a phase where theyre acting of their own accord, York says. I dont think the current scenario is workable for much longer. I dont think people will put up with it.

Our best glimpse of the post-deplatforming future has been Facebooks Oversight Board, which has done its best to square the realities of a platform with some kind of higher speech principles. Its the kind of notice-and-appeal system that advocates have been asking platforms to adopt for years. Faced with a never-ending stream of hard choices, Facebook put tens of millions of dollars into building a master moderator that everyone can trust. For all the systems flaws, its the best anyones been able to do.

In practice, most of the Oversight Board rulings trace the line where differences of opinion give way to political violence. Of the 18 decisions from the board so far, 13 are directly related to racial or sectarian conflicts, whether dealing with Kurdish separatists, anti-Chinese sentiment in Myanmar, or a jokey meme about the Armenian genocide. The specifics of the ruling might be about a particular Russian term for Azerbaijanis, but the potential for mass oppression and genocide looms in the background of each one. Taking on the work of moderating Facebook, the Oversight Board has ended up as the arbiter of how much racism is acceptable in conflicts all around the world.

But for all the boards public deliberations, it hasnt changed the basic problem of platform politics. Whenever the Oversight Boards fragile principles for online speech conflict with Facebooks corporate self-interest, the oversight board loses out. The most egregious example so far is Facebooks Crosscheck system that resulted in leniency high-profile accounts, which the Oversight Board had to find out about from The Wall Street Journal. But even as the company sidesteps its own panel of experts, Facebook can retreat into platitudes about the free exchange of opinions, as if every choice was being guided by a higher set of principles.

Weve been using freedom of opinion to sidestep this mess for a very long time. Jean-Paul Sartre described a version of the same pattern in his 1946 work Anti-Semite and Jew, writing just after the Allied liberation of Paris. In the opening lines of the essay, he marvels at how often the blood-soaked rhetoric of the Nazis was minimized as simply antisemitic opinion:

This word opinion makes us stop and think. It is the word a hostess uses to bring to an end a discussion that threatens to become acrimonious. It suggests that all points of view are equal; it reassures us, for it gives an inoffensive appearance to ideas by reducing them to the level of tastes. All tastes are natural; all opinions are permitted In the name of freedom of opinion, the anti-semite asserts the right to preach the anti-Jewish crusade everywhere.

This is the dream that tech companies are only now waking from. Companies like Facebook play the role of the hostess hoping for discussion that is lively enough to keep us in the room but not so heated that it will damage the furniture. But we can no longer pretend these opinions are safely cordoned off from the world. They are a part of the same power struggles that shape every other political arena. Worse, they are subject to the same dangers. We can only hope that, over the next 10 years, platforms find a better way to grapple with them.

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Facebook, Twitter, and social media vs. the world - The Verge

Photo Courtesy of John Bauld

Content warning: this article contains discussions of transphobia and transphobic violence.

Recently, comedian Dave Chapelle has come under fire for voicing anti-transgender remarks in his new Netflix special The Closer. In a slew of transphobic rhetoric targeting trans women and a handful of comments defending the homophobic comments of rapper DaBaby, Chapelle doubled down on past instances of transphobia, going so far as to pit the experiences of Black people and the LGBTQ+ community against each other in an attempt to undermine the struggle faced by queer people in the 21st century.

The Closer is only the most recent instance of media personalities using their platforms to promote hate, and it certainly wont be the last. Moving forward, one thing needs to be indisputable: if you care about trans people, you need to stop supporting transphobes. Completely.

You can preach separating the art from the artist until youre red in the face, but the fact at the end of the day is that continuing to platform bigots does nothing but embolden their message, thereby endangering the marginalized communities they target. Consistently turning a blind eye to bigotry and passing off violent rhetoric as a joke forces marginalized communities to face increased violence while also undermining and overlooking their experiences.

Take, for instance, J.K. Rowling a known transphobe defended by Chapelle, who proudly assumed the label of Team TERF as he came to her aid in reference to her past remarks. Her books are chock-full of racism, antisemitism and transphobia, mirroring her values in real life.

Its insufficient to write her TERF, or trans-exclusionary radical feminst behavior off as a small misdemeanor in her otherwise lovably nostalgic franchise because her continued success allows for trans-exclusionary radical feminists to be emboldened by the sheer scale of her bigotry in the media. Rowlings transphobia isnt just harmful rhetoric confined to a fictional narrative it actively contributes to anti-transgender legislation and policies, seen when Republican Senator James Lankford quoted her while fighting the passage of the Equality Act.

The fearmongering generated by trans-exclusionary radical feminists is seen in the widespread yet disproven narrative that trans people are dangerous, which in turn creates more danger for visibly transgender people simply existing in public spaces. A woman trying to use the restroom is now more likely to be harassed because a cisgender person deemed her very existence a threat.

Making dehumanizing jokes about trans people isnt funny or subversive its violent. The most recent reports from the Human Rights Campaign suggest that at least 42 transgender and/or gender nonconforming people have already been killed since the beginning of 2021, with 2020 being the previous most violent year on record for transphobic violence. GLAAD also reports that these numbers may often be lower than reality due to underreporting.

By extension, transgender people are more likely to have less legal and healthcare protections, are more likely to live in poverty and are more likely to face harassment and discrimination. Trans women specifically are more likely to face violence than their cis peers, according to reports from GLAAD. I include these statistics not to use their suffering as a talking point, but rather to emphasize the reality experienced by so many transgender and gender nonconforming people in the wake of bigotry by those who cry injustice at being cancelled for their hateful remarks.

Its nave to say that jokes in poor taste have no effect on the world around us. Every time a public figure with a large following spouts harmful rhetoric, real people will be hurt. As such, the dollars you spend supporting these people are just reinforcing their impact.

Its insufficient to say you support trans rights while doing nothing to materially improve the circumstances in which transgender people live. What heavy lifting are you doing to deconstruct transphobia in your daily life? Do you see your trans peers as their actual gender, rather than simply memorizing their pronouns? Do you call out casual transphobia when you hear people using it including your friends and family? Are you taking time to educate yourself about the issues facing the trans community? Are you putting in effort to help trans people receive gender affirming care?

As harsh as it may sound, your words mean nothing if they arent reflected by your continuous action. If you arent consistently and actively listening to transgender people and fighting for their rights to respect and safety, you need to ask yourself why that is.

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Deplatforming TERFs cannot end with performative activism - The Hofstra Chronicle

Fourteen attorneys general are demanding that Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg censor more posts and crack down on users who amplify content about COVID-19 that does not agree with the governments narrative.

While we appreciate the efforts your platforms have undertaken to address some elements of vaccine disinformation on your platforms, including connecting users with factual COVID-19 information, we believe Facebook itself is undermining these efforts by allowing such false or misleading statements to persist and spread, their letter states.

The attorneys general hailing from Connecticut, California, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia not only asked Facebooks founder to reveal its internal censorship methods for dealing with vaccine disinformation, but also asked the Big Tech mogul to commit to deplatforming certain users for promoting anti-vaccine content and activists.

Facebook already has a long history of censoring, downplaying, and even removing content it doesnt agree with but the attorneys general cited the complaints of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, a Democrat activist who helped nuke the New York Posts Hunter Biden story last October, as the reason to demand more action from Zuckerberg.

How is vaccine content being scored for removal? Have political or public relations considerations been factored into the scoring system? the letter asks. The Wall Street Journal reported that hundreds of thousands of anti-vaccine comments have been viewed every day. What is Facebooks protocol to address false and misleading vaccine content that appears in the comments section of posts?

Anew report from The Federalist shows that the Facebook CEO funneled $419.5 million with strings attached through The Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) and The Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) to select U.S. elections offices before the 2020 election. These Zuck Bucks were largely awarded based on partisanship to local and state offices, and demanded the promotion of universal mail-in voting, greater opportunities for ballot curing, and other vulnerable election tactics.

Zuckerberg didnt just help Democrats by censoring their political opponents. He directly funded liberal groups running partisan get-out-the-vote operations. In fact, he helped those groups infiltrate election offices in key swing states by doling out large grants to crucial districts, Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway wrote in her new book Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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14 Dem AGs Demand Facebook Censor Dissidents More Than It ...

While many of these debates will be familiar to some readers, the analytic precision Srinivasan brings to them serves as a reminder that sexual ethics always need to be contextual and nuanced. The imperative for feminism, as these essays eloquently demonstrate, is not to find a safe space in which clear parameters are drawn (with even clearer exclusions), but to dwell on discomfort and ambivalence that come from being genuinely open to inclusivity. It also means acknowledging the deep tensions that have shaped feminism as a political movement.

To be sure, Srinivasan is not the first to make this observation. The poet and philosopher Denise Riley made a similar observation many decades ago, noting how the inconstant ontological status of being a woman has always made feminism a site of instability and tension. But, for Riley, as indeed I think for Srinivasan, this need not trouble us precisely because it bears witness to the internal differences that have productively shaped feminist political agency.

What perhaps needs to trouble feminism is knowing when and how to relinquish power. The final essay, Sex, Carceralism, Capitalism ponders how feminist gains might be implicated in other structural inequalities. To ask which women benefit from feminisms advances, and which women dont, or knowing when and how to relinquish power so other voices can be heard, does not mean giving up on feminism as a transformational political movement.

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Instead, Srinivasan asks that we confront feminisms deep ethical ambiguities, not least its frequent complicity in global capitalisms counterfeit language of individual freedom and a carceral culture that is deeply raced and classed. This is a book that gets you thinking and gives you enough hope to imagine that things might be otherwise.

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Sex and the womens movement, then and now - Sydney Morning Herald

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On Friday, the Washington Post dropped another bombshell report on what President Donald Trumps top lieutenants were up to during the January 6 insurrection: As a mob chanting hang Mike Pence! raged through the Capitol, one of Trumps lawyers, John Eastman, sent an email to the vice presidents office blaming Pence for the carnage. According to an email obtained by the paper, Eastman (who was responding to an angry email from a Pence staffer) wrote that The siege is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened. Whats more, the Post reported, Eastman continued to advocate for the electoral college results to be rejected after Congress returned to business following the riot.

Eastman, at the time (but no longer) a professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law, had spoken alongside Rudy Giuliani at Trumps rally on the National Mall that morning, where he alleged widespread fraud from Georgia voting machines and stated that if Pence didnt delay the certification of the Electoral College, We no longer live in a self-governing republic. But behind the scenes, hed played an even more important role; as Robert Costa and Bob Woodward reported in their book Peril, Eastman had drafted a memo that outlined a series of steps by which Trump, with Pences help, could overturn the results of the election.

Since that memo was published, Eastman and his current employer, the Claremont Institute, have sought to downplay its significance. Claremont recently described the reporting and criticism of its fellow as a disinformation, de-platforming, and ostracism campaign, and vowed to not remain silent in the face of widespread lies peddled by malicious domestic political opponents. Eastman, in a lengthy interview with National Review, said that the memo was simply one of several arguments hed prepared for Team Trumps perusal and not one he ultimately recommended or even agreed with in full.

But Eastman was not participating in some after-hours law-school bull session; he was advising a corrupt and desperate man who would do almost anything to hold onto power. The radical scenario outlined in the memo, and the equally-radical scenario Eastman says he ultimately recommendedin which Pence would decline to certify the results, buying time for Republican legislators in key states to purportedly investigate alleged fraud, and submit new slates of electorswould have only indulged Trumps delusions about his own chances.

And Eastman pursued all of this, because he was likewise deluded about what had happened in November. As part of a legal analysis he prepared for state legislators making the case that they could reject their states election results, the Post reported, Eastmans seven-page paper featured theories about voter fraud published by the right-wing blog the Gateway Pundit and an anonymous Twitter user named DuckDiver19.

DuckDiver19. Its a long way from Federalist no. 68.

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The More We Learn About John Eastman's Involvement in Trump's Coup, the Worse it Gets Mother Jones - Mother Jones

America's technology sector produces the world's most innovative and successful companies. Yet there's a near-bipartisan consensus in Washington that the days of "Big Tech"companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft, which have made a number of high-profile acquisitionsmust come to an end.

Liberals seek to rein in the supposed excesses of technology companies when it comes to wages and workers' rights, while conservatives rant about censorship and deplatforming on Twitter. Meanwhile, America's adversaries in the Xi Jinping government in Chinaa rising superpower that cheats and steals its way to victorychuckle at our self-destructive response. Rather than enhancing our innovative technology industry, we risk undermining it through increased government intervention.

The United States is home to companies that make up substantially more than half of the market value of the top 100 global public companies. Technology makes up more than a third of America's contribution to that market value, at nearly $8 trillion. According to the World Bank, the innovation-based digital economy grew more than twice as fast as the overall GDP between 2004 and 2019. In the U.S., the digital economy has grown more than three times as fast as the overall U.S. economy since 2005. This torrid growth increases domestic employment and labor productivity. All of this redounds directly to U.S. national securityeconomic security is national security.

America's economic future depends not on big manufacturing, but on technology and innovation. Where steel plants and manufacturing plants once stood, we now see software development and chip design labs, cloud computing nodes and supply distribution centers. All this has happened specifically in the United States precisely because the government allowed resources to flow to their most productive uses and at times helped prime the pump with basic research funding.

The U.S., unlike some European nations, has avoided creating a vast web of bureaucracy and heavy-handed government regulation. While there are some pockets of innovation in Europe, the regulatory environments in France, Germany and Spain make them much less attractive to cutting-edge companies. Venture capital investment in the U.S. is more than three times larger than in the EU. For all of its foibles, America remains a good bet for innovative companies.

Our relatively laissez-faire economic policy has also created a robust startup community. It supports strong venture capital funding, like Andreessen Horowitz' investments in the burgeoning crypto industry and social media app Clubhouse. It also has helped the U.S. become the world leader in startup acquisitions.

Current U.S. economic policy has also created long-term growth opportunities in the public markets. American tech companies, for example, make up four of the five most valuable public companies based on market capitalization. Larger technology companies like Illumina may very well be able to fund smaller ones like Grail. They can identify opportunities to leverage economies of scale, make important innovations, such as new ways to screen for cancer, and bring new technology like multi-cancer early detection tests to market. This is a good thing.

Yet today we hear increased calls for government control. These calls are motivated by concerns about the political influence of a handful of tech firms. Conservatives who want to use antitrust to punish Big Tech believe that large technology platforms have too much control over speech and are censoring those who share their views. Liberals who favor breaking up these companies worry about Big Tech's power over democracy, small business and worker rights.

But as the economic evidence shows, when companies can operate free from fear of punishment, competition flourishes and consumers benefit. Those in favor of stringent antitrust enforcement often argue that it will strengthen the small-business sector by lowering prices and increasing wages. Small businesses, however, experience many benefits from the tech sector that allow them to operate efficiently. Computing power is more affordable than ever. In the majority of technology jobs, wages are drastically higher than in other areas.

A number of failed antitrust lawsuits have exposed the weakness of the "break 'em up" movement. Recent government and private cases against Qualcomm, Facebook and Apple have failed for lack of evidence to support claims of inappropriate use of monopoly power, even as the government tries again and again. This is not surprising; antitrust law is designed to stoke competition and stop anti-competitive behavior, not to solve political disputes or kneecap successful companies.

Transforming our core business laws, as a range of legislative proposals seek to do, would be dangerous. U.S. antitrust laws have kept competition vibrant and the economy humming. Modern competition law and the consumer-welfare standard have created a stable, predictable climate for firms to innovate.

China, meanwhile, has gone down this roadto no good end. Its "crackdown" on large companies has little if anything to do with creating competition or innovation. Rather, the government's goal appears to be to punish companies that refuse to consistently toe the party line.

For now, those who want to regulate American technology seem to have the upper hand. But their victory is likely to be short-lived. Americans are increasingly attuned to the threat that China poses to our future. They recognize that if we are going to remain competitiveeither economically or militarilywe need more American (and allied) innovation now.

The American people want and need real innovation driven by entrepreneurs, not bureaucrats in Washington. We ought to let them have it.

Jamil N. Jaffer is the former Chief Counsel and Senior Advisor to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and currently serves as the Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School. Joshua D. Wright is a former Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Global Antitrust Institute and University Professor at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.

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We Need to Protect American Innovation in the Competition with China | Opinion - Newsweek

The crux of the problem with deplatforming: when its good, its excellent; and when its bad, its dangerous.

Credit: Yelber Groeneveld (CC BY-NC 2.0)A faded poster showing Donald Trump and Alex Jones of Infowars on a street in Tbilisi, Georgia, February 2, 2018.

Deplatforming works has, in recent months, become a popular slogan on social media. When a widely reviled public figure is booted from a social media platform or a television channel, Twitter users repeat the phrase as a truism. And, indeed, there is evidence to support the claim that taking away someones digital megaphone can effectively silence them, or significantly reduce their influence.

After Twitter and Facebook permanently banned Donald Trump in January, for example, there was a noticeable and quantifiable drop in online disinformation. In 2016 Twitter took the then-unprecedented step of banning Milo Yiannopoulos, a notorious provocateur and grifter who disseminated hate speech and disinformation. Yiannopoulos tried vainly to mount a comeback, but never recovered from the loss of his bully pulpit. It appears his 15 minutes of fame are well over.

Alex Jones, the prominent conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder, was booted from multiple platforms in 2018 for violating rules against hate speech, among other things. Jones disseminated disgusting conspiracy theories like the claim that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax perpetrated to curtail gun rights, thus re-victimizing the parents of children who had been shot and killed at the Connecticut elementary school. His rants spawned fresh conspiracies about other mass shootings, like the one at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, which he said was staged by crisis actors. Jones boasted that banning him from mainstream platforms would only make him stronger. The more Im persecuted, the stronger I get, he said. But three years later, his name has almost disappeared from the news cycle.

Experts on online hate speech, misinformation, and extremism agree that kicking extremist haters off platforms like Facebook and YouTube significantly limits their reach.

According to one recent study, far right content creators who were kicked off YouTube found they were unable to maintain their large audience on BitChute, an alternative video platform that caters to extremists. Another study found that a far-right user who is deplatformed simultaneously by several mainstream social media platforms rapidly loses followers and influence. In other words, toxic influencers who are forced off mainstream social media do have the option of migrating to secret platforms that specialize in hosting extremists, but if they are not on YouTube they will be starved of new targets to radicalize and recruit.

The removal of a Yiannopoulos or a Jones from the quasi-public sphere can be a huge relief to the people they target. However, I am not convinced that censorship is an effective tactic for social change. Nor do I believe that it is in our best interests to entrust social media corporations with the power to moderate our discourse.

The negative effects of deplatforming have not been studied as thoroughly as the positive effectswhich is not surprising, given that the phenomenon is only a few years old. But there are a few clear possibilities, like the creation of cult-like followings driven by a sense of persecution, information vacuums, and the proliferation of underground organizingsuch as the organized harassment campaigns that are organized by incel (involuntarily celibate) communities on sites like 4Chan and then taken to more central platforms like Twitter.

Substack, the subscription newsletter platform, now hosts several deplatformed people who are thriving, like gender critical activist and TV writer Glen Linehan (who was kicked off Twitter for harassing transgender people), or Bari Weiss, the self-proclaimed silenced journalist who claimed in her public resignation letter from The New York Times that her colleagues had created a work environment that was hostile to her. Substack allows the author to set the terms for their newsletter by deciding on the subscription price, and whether theyd like the company to assign them an editor. The company has also been clear about its views on content moderation, with which I largely agree: free speech is encouraged, with minimal content moderation. My concern is that newsletters facilitate the creation of a cult following, while giving writers with a persecution complex a place to join forces in a self-congratulatory, circular way.

Of course, even Substack has its limits: I doubt that the platform would be happy to host Alex Jones or Donald Trump.

Deplatforming can also have a damaging impact on fragile democracies.

In early June Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari issued a threat, via his Twitter account, that he would punish secessionists in the Biafra region. Twitter decided the threat violated its policies and removed the tweet. In response, the Nigerian government blocked access to the social media company indefinitely and said those who circumvented the ban would be subject to prosecutiona situation that is, as of this writing, ongoingalthough the government says it will restore access in a few days. Nigerian businesses are suffering from the ban, while those who do find a way to tweet risk arrest. This is a salutary example that illustrates how a social media companys ostensibly righteous decision to censor world leaders can backfire.

The first time I heard the term deplatforming, it was used to describe student-led boycotts of guest speakers invited to campus. The mediator in these situations is the university administration, which responds to the demands of enrolled, tuition-paying studentswho should have the ultimate say in who comes to speak at their university. But social media platforms are large multinational corporations. As I argue in my recent book, making corporations the gatekeepers for acceptable expression is deeply problematic.

In cases when the social media platform acts as an intermediary between external forces and an individual, the resulting scenario can resemble mob rule.

Chris Boutt, who runs a YouTube channel about mental health issues called The Rewired Soul, experienced the mob rule scenario firsthand. Boutt references pop culture in his videos about mental health and addiction, in which he talks about his own experience, often using illustrative examples from the world of YouTube influencers. He attracted angry detractors who believed he was causing harm by speculating about the mental health of popular YouTube stars. In an effort to silence Boutt, his critics attacked him in their own videos, which ultimately resulted in his receiving death threats.

Everything I did was from a good place, he told me during a recent conversation. In their mind, I was so dangerous that I should not be able to speak. So thats where my concerns with deplatforming come in, when you get a mob mentality [combined with] misinformation. He added: Im not a big fan of the court of public opinion. Boutt says that his angry critics efforts to get him deplatformed included dislike bomb campaigns, whereby users mass-dislike videos in an effort to trick the YouTube algorithm. According to Boutt, the tactic worked: His channel is no longer financially viable.

Mobs who take matters into their own hands, manipulating recommendation algorithms to get someone removed from a platform, have been around for a long time. In recent years, however, they have become more sophisticated; meanwhile, the publics understanding of how platforms work has increased.

According to one recent Vice report there is a cottage industry of professional scammers who exploit Instagrams policies to get individuals banned by making fraudulent claims against them. Want to get someone kicked off Instagram? Pay a professional to report them (falsely) for using a fake identity on their profile. Anyone can be targeted by these tactics. Repressive governments, for example, target the Facebook accounts of journalists, democracy activists and marginalized communities worldwide.

So here is the crux of the problem with deplatforming: when its good, its excellent; and when its bad, its dangerous. Deftly removing noxious propagandists is good. Empowering ordinary people to silence a common enemy by manipulating an algorithm is not good. Silencing marginalized activists fighting repressive governments is very, very bad.

Finally: Is censorship really a meaningful strategy for social change? Surely the most effective means of routing hate speech is to tackle its root causes rather than hacking at its symptoms. The study of online misinformation and extremism are currently hot topics, the darlings of funders in the digital space, with millions of dollars doled out to academic institutions. Certainly, online hate speech is an important area of study, but the intense focus on this one issue can come at the expense of other urgent social issueslike online privacy, the declining right to free expression worldwide, and the ongoing struggles against repressive governments.

I suggest that deplatforming should be viewed and wielded with extreme caution, rather than presented as a means of fixing the internetor, more importantly, our societies.

See more here:

The delights and the dangers of deplatforming extremists ...

The establishment media have settled a new motto: If we dont cover it, it didnt happen.The uniform silence of the supposed standard-bearers of journalism in response to last weeks release of another Hunter Biden video confirms the corrupt medias adoption of this maxim.

On Wednesday, The Daily Mail first broke the story that it had obtained a copy of a video showing a naked Hunter Biden telling a prostitute that in the summer of 2018 he nearly overdosed during a drug-laden binge in Las Vegas. After coming to, a Russian woman, Hunters drug dealer, and two of the dealers associates remained in the Vegas penthouse, he said, and Hunter later discovered his laptop missing.

I think hes the one that stole my computer, Hunter told the prostitute. I think the three of them, the three guys that were like a little group. The dealer and his two guys, I took them everywhere. They have videos of me doing this. They have videos of me doing crazy f-cking sex f-cking, you know, the video posted by The Daily Mail showed Hunter saying. My computer, I had taken tons of like, just left like that cam on, Hunter continued, and somebody stole it during that period of time.

In response, the prostitute asked Hunter if he worried the Russian thieves would try to blackmail him. Yeah, in some way yeah, Hunter replied, noting his father was running for president, and that I talk about it all the time.

While BBC monitoring of Russian media reported that by Thursday all three Russian primetime TV news stations had focused on the newly released video of President Bidens son, American legacy networks and print outlets ignored the story entirely, even while reporting on the upcoming auction of Hunter Bidens artwork and concerns over influence-peddling.

Coverage of the story remained mainly limited to Fox News and conservative media outlets. While Newsweek ran a piece on the tape, the articles focus was more on how conservatives were reacting to the news than on the national security implications flowing from the video.

After providing a synopsis of The Daily Mail article, the Newsweek article pivoted, stating, A number of conservative commentators and lawmakers are discussing the Mailreport on social media. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee shared the article and referred toprominent Democratic lawmakersinvolved in the impeachment of former PresidentDonald Trump.

Screengrabs of tweets from Huckabee, Mollie Hemingway, Nick Adams, and Liz Wheeler followed, as if the importance lay not in the national security risk revealed, but in conservatives response to the video. But as pundit and law professor Jonathan Turley noted, The Daily Mail story is major news from any standpoint. Turley continued:

Either the Presidents son admitted that Russians have blackmail material on him or the media (or others) have created a fake videotape and falsely framed Biden. One would expect, if it is the latter, that the Biden team will be announcing a lawsuit today. However, like the coverage in most major news outlets, there are only the familiar sound of crickets.

Turley is correct, but understates the significance of the video: If authentic, the video reveals national security risks extending much beyond Russians having blackmail material on the presidents son.

First, given the emails and text messages saved on the MacBook that Hunter abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, it is extremely likely the second laptop (the stolen Vegas one) provided the Russians blackmail material on Joe Biden concerning the Big Guy and the pay-to-play scandal under which the elder Biden reportedly received a 10 percent cut.

Second, given how Hunter says the computer was stolen, questions abound over whether Russian operatives had gotten close to Hunter and, if so, what else they may have learned besides what was contained on the laptop.

Third, the incident raises serious concerns about the strength of American intelligence agencies. Did our intelligence communities know of the existence of this video before the Daily Mail published it? Were they aware of the stolen laptop? Do they know who stole the laptop and whether they were Russian agents? Do they know the extent of damaging material in the hands of our adversaries? Did they brief Joe Biden and his national security team on their findings?

The potential blackmailing of Hunter Biden pales in comparison to the real national security risks revealed by the videos, yet the corrupt media couldnt care less.

That the media is not questioning the authenticity of the video indicates they both believe the videos are real and know a repeat of their performance in October 2020 wont fly in the publics eye. That time, in response to The New York Posts release of similar videos, the corrupt press and intelligence officials spun the video as misinformation long enough to squelch the story, get The New York Post de-platformed, and prop up Joe Bidens candidacy until election day.

So the only option for a press wishing to protect President Biden is to ignore the story.

Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and adjunct instructor at the college of business at the University of Notre Dame.The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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What To Make Of The Media Blackout Of The Latest Hunter ...

Back in July, former President Trump bellied up to the bar in the Southern District of Florida and sued Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as their respective CEOs, for tortious deplatforming. In his telling, the protections afforded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act transformed websites into agents of the government, magically turning all content moderation into censorship in violation of the First Amendment.

Section 230(c)(1) and 230(c)(2) were deliberately enacted by Congress to induce, encourage, and promote social medial companies to accomplish an objectivethe censorship of supposedly objectionable but constitutionally protected speech on the Internetthat Congress could not constitutionally accomplish itself.

Congress cannot lawfully induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.

Apparently, Zuck is president now. Dont forget to like, upvote, and fave!

Apart from the eleventy-seven other problems with this argument, theres the minor issue that the terms of service for each of these platforms require users to file all claims in San Francisco. Unsurprisingly, Twitters lawyers argue that this forum selection clause is binding upon Trump and the ragtag band of weirdos who have joined this suit as plaintiffs, including author Naomi Wolf and talkshow host Wayne Allyn Root.

On September 1 exactly one day after the plaintiffs bothered to effect actual service on the company Twitter moved to have the case transferred to the Northern District of California, writing:

The Twitter User Agreement requires that disputes relating to the use of Twitters services must be resolved in federal or state court in San Francisco, California. In particular, the User Agreement states that [a]ll disputes related to these Terms or Services will be brought solely in the federal or state courts located in San Francisco County, California, United States, and that the parties consent to personal jurisdiction and waive any objection as to inconvenient forum. Terms of Service at 9.

But Donald Trump has an answer for that one, and it is that he is actually the government.

Defendants Motion should be denied because the forum selection clause in Defendants TOS does not apply to Plaintiff, who at all times relevant to this dispute was the sitting President of the United States and the head of the Executive Branch of the federal government, he wrote.

Assume arguendo that Donald Trump is aware that he is no longer president. Yes, he did claim yesterday that Your Republican Presidential candidate won in a landslide. But let us err on the side of generosity and take it as a given that he knows that someone else is in the Oval Office this morning, tapping out boring tweets on the @POTUS handle the one Trump himself did not deign to use, preferring to humiliate and fire his underlings via the @realDonaldTrump account.

Relying on the Second Circuit holding in Knight First Amdt. Inst. at Columbia Univ. v. Trump, 928 F.3d 226 (2d Cir. 2019) that Trump could not block critics because he was using his account for official government business, Trumps lawyers argue that the account is now and forever a government entity and thus exempt from both the companys forum selection clause and its New Rules on Violence and Physical Harm.

One thing is undeniably clear in this case: Plaintiffs account was a government account, and not a private one when he was censored, Trumps lawyers argue, seemingly unaware that their client is now a civilian and was so on July 7, 2021 when the complaint was filed to vindicate his rights as a private citizen whose First Amendment Rights were being cruelly trampled by Jack Dorsey, Secretary of Vegan Meditation.

Note that this argument does not apply to any of the other plaintiffs. Sorry, Naomi, youll have to speak your truth about children forgetting how to smile over on Telegram.

The plaintiffs make a whole raft of equally strange arguments about the enforceability of Twitters forum selection clause, which has been routinely upheld in court, including an argument that California judges will simply throw up their hands in confusion if forced to interpret the state law violations the plaintiffs tacked onto their amended complaint to justify venue in Florida.

These include claims under the Florida Stop Social Media Censorship Act and the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. The social media law has been enjoined since July 1, i.e. before this case was even filed. Also in July, the Southern District of Florida dismissed a similar FDUTPA claim against Google. (No points will be awarded for guessing which sparklemagic libelslander lawyer filed that LOLsuit.)

But its fine, see, because look here at this footnote:

Violations of the SSMCA are deemed to be violations of FDUTPA as well; unless otherwise noted, henceforth the use of FDUTPA will necessarily encompass the SSMCA as well.

Also Twitter is like crack cocaine, so users cant give meaningful consent because theyre jonesing for a hit and are coerced into agreeing to the terms of service.

The total immersion that Defendant seeks to achieve on the part of its Users leads to a dependency that alters the relative bargaining positions of Defendant and those Users. Thus, even when Defendant prompts its Users to review its updated TOS, Defendant knows that its Users are dependent on its services and more than likely than not to accept its changes, whatever they may be.

Donald Trump needs his fix! Come on, @Jack, hook a government entity up!

Its all very confusing. Just remember that Twitter is the government, and cannot abridge poor Donald Trumps First Amendment rights. Also Trump is the government and cannot be bound by the normal rules of civil procedure. At the same time, Trump is not the government because he lives in Florida and has venue-specific rights under state laws, even ones that have been blocked by courts.

Sounds legit.

Trump v. Twitter[Docket via Court Listener]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

View original post here:

Trump Claims He And Twitter Are Both The Government In ...

Radical Calvinist Douglas Wilson may be a pain in the backside, but Google should not have kicked him off their apps

Readers who have been with this blog for a while may recall a dust-up I had with Pastor Douglas Wilson of Moscow, Idaho, over the way he and his church handled an instance of sexual misconduct and abuse. It is more than fair to say that Wilsons bomb-throwing Calvinism is not my jam. In fact, thats a massive understatement. But Ive got to stand up for Wilson and his churchs associate pastor, Toby Sumpter, in a matter of great importance to all religious people, both conservative and progressive, and to anybody who stands far outside the mainstream making radical critiques.

Heres the story:

With coronavirus restrictions forcing the closure of church gatherings worldwide, and authorities threatening to punish those who continue to attend public worship, the Christian church has become more dependent on the internet than ever.

Churches are now employing popular social media and video sharing platforms to conduct their services and broadcast their sermons. But how will the tech giants and social media outlets respond, especially considering their tendency to censor unapproved messages?

Well, it would appear straight-up banning churches isnt off the table for some platforms, as a church in Moscow, Idaho discovered last week.

On Friday, Google suspended Christ Churchs app from the Google Play store after accusing the pastors of a lack of sensitivity and/or capitalizing on the current coronavirus pandemic.

The church received a notice from the platform, stating: We dont allow apps that lack reasonable sensitivity towards or capitalize on a natural disaster, atrocity, conflict, death, or other tragic event.

Your app has been suspended and removed due to this policy issue, the notice added.

Heres what the church posted on Twitter in response:

The story I link to above lists three sermons two by Wilson, and one by Sumpter as possibly at fault. I dont have time to listen to all three, but I did spend over an hour listening to the Sumpter one, and the second Wilson one, and taking notes.

Heres the Sumpter sermon, titled, A Message On Plagues:

The sermon is a standard one for traditional Christianity. Preaching on verses from the Old Testament book of Joel, Sumpter says that Christians should regard the coronavirus as a call to repentance. He says that Joel tells us that the greatest punishment of this plague is that Gods people are not allowed to gather for worship (Sumpter is preaching to a congregation watching by livestream). Hes not calling on Christians to defy the authorities, but is saying that God is sending us a message about the way we were living prior to the plague.

The fact that we are all stuck at home, and not able to gather for worship, is a sign of Gods judgment because we have not used the gifts of God to praise Him.

Does it break your heart that you cant worship God, that you cant gather with his people or not? asks Sumpter. He adds that this plague is a test of faith. God is testing us to see if we will praise him in hard times as well as in good.

He says if youre not giving God thanks for all He has given us mac and cheese, paper towels then you are failing. Hes asking us if we will praise him even in times of suffering.

Like I said, this is standard Christianity. A church that does not read this plague as a call to repentance is a church that doesnt know how to read the Bible. This isnt a Calvinism thing; this is straightforward Christianity.

As I said, I listened to one of the two Wilson sermons. Doug Wilson is the kind of pastor who preaches and writes as if he believes that pugnacity is next to godliness. He is a powerful rhetorician, and can be quite funny but humility is not his strong suit. One his blog, which is how I know his work, he comes across as someone who is more interested in owning the libs heretics than in converting hearts and minds. I tell you this up front to let you know that I am the sort of Christian who, though a conservative, is not favorably disposed to listen to a message from Doug Wilson.

Here is the sermon I listened to. Its from late March:

This sermon has a lot more pepper than Sumpters, and is probably what triggered Google. Still, it is a standard message in traditional Christianity. Wilsons basic argument is that the plague is a call to repentance and he warns that we dont want to acknowledge that. He points out that in the Exodus story, the plagues God sent against Egypt to compel Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go only hardened Pharaohs heart. Wilson says that all of us should be looking into our own hearts now, to root out the corruption we find there. And part of that corruption is idolatry.

We need to stop having faith in the things we once thought were so secure, Wilson says. God is shaking everything so that we would have faith in Him.

How is that not true? Its certainly true and all of us need to hear that.

So what probably got Wilson in trouble? In this sermon, he condemns, and condemns in strong language, abortion and gay marriage as sins that require repentance. Now, I wish he had listed sins that are more likely to be committed by people in Moscow, Idaho, and in the rest of Red America. God is no doubt angry over the widespread use of pornography in our country. Think of all the pridefulness, the selfishness, the hardness of heart towards our neighbor all things that you find in Red America too. Think of all the disordered heterosexual lust. And the warmaking this country has fostered on innocent people. I dont disagree with Wilson about abortion and homosexuality, and I am sure that he would agree with me about these other things, or most of these things, being sinful. I wish, though, that he would have called out us conservatives too. This is not a time for us to fall prey to self-righteousness.

Heres where I think Wilsons sermon was radical, in a powerful and prophetic way. Toward the end, after talking about hardness of heart, he mentions that the Japanese did not surrender after seeing one of their cities (Hiroshima) vaporized. It took a second city being obliterated (Nagasaki) before they gave up. Wilson says that we Christians ought not to be praying for relief from the plague, but rather, We should be asking God to do what it takes to bring us to repentance.

Dont pray that God will let up. Dont pray that God will lighten up, he says. Pray that God will press through and do what it takes to get us to sign the surrender papers.

He goes on to say that all of this suffering will have been for nothing if we only return to how we were living before. If the churches are full at Easter, he says (remember, this sermon was given before the holy day), that will be a disaster. If people are going to church for the same reason theyre going to Costco, then were simply waiting for Nagasaki.

He goes on to say that if breaking the United States of America, in her pride and insolence is the way to get rid of gay marriage, then Christians should welcome it. Says Wilson, of abortion, I would rather live in a poor broken country that didnt kill babies than in a rich, insolent once that does.

Thats a great line. He also says that the problem is not that our elected representatives fail to represent us. The problem is they represent us well, he says. And that should be part of our repentance.

Now look: you can fault Wilson for focusing on this sermon on gay marriage and abortion, or you can fault him (as I do) for focusing on these sins and not naming others that strike closer to home among his congregation, and those outside his congregation who look to him for leadership. But the idea that America has to repent is powerful and true. Had a progressive pastor spoken of the sins of greed and violence, for example, it would have been just as true, and just as necessary to hear though it would also have been preferable had that progressive pastor spoken to the sins that are closer to the hearts and lives of progressive people, and not just called out those who are unlike his congregation.

My point is this: whatever my conflicts, theological and otherwise, with Doug Wilson and his circle, I profited from hearing these sermons. I was challenged by them, in a good way. Did I agree 100 percent with them? No I did not. Do I believe that these sermons ought to be freely available on Googles platform for people to hear? Absolutely.

We dont know precisely why Google booted Wilsons churchs app, but listening to Wilsons sermon (more than Sumpters), its not hard to guess why. So, even though it probably makes him cringe to have Rod Dreher stand up for him, and believe me, it makes Rod Dreher cringe to do it Im going to stand up for him.

First, if Google really did boot Christ Church over Wilsons comments connecting abortion and gay marriage to the judgment of God, then they may well kick off the platform any number of Christian churches for holding those views. Few Christian churches are led by a pastor who is as combative as Doug Wilson, but if Doug Wilson has lost his platform over this, no traditional Christian church is safe.

This, by the way, is not the states doing; its Googles, which, as a private company, has a right to decide who it wants on its platform. But dissident Christians, and political dissidents of all kinds, should be aware that this is an incredible amount of power to wield. Those who control access to Internet platforms control what can and cant be said on there.

Which leads me to my second point, one meant not only for right-of-center Christians. We should want to protect unpopular speakers and unpopular speech in the public square. It hardly needs saying that people in the Bay Area who censor Googles platform are bound to be more eager to silence right-wing radicals than left-wing radicals. But what if those right-wing radicals happen to say something true and important? Something that only they can see, and say? (The same is true of left-wing radicals.) It is true that a time of national crisis does call on us to be more prudent about what we say, and it certainly gives the state more power to control what is said in the public square. Theres no getting around that. To cite an extreme example, Britain in World War II could not have allowed Nazi propagandists to operate freely. Speech that is a direct threat to public safety and order may legitimately be suppressed.

But this is not that! Is this offensive speech? To many, yes. Doug Wilson has a special gift for making enemies, and he can be incredibly obnoxious. But at the risk of sounding like a fundamentalist liberal, what makes America great is that we have a political order that protects offensive speech. This is not pornography. This is theological, and maybe political, discourse. You dont have to like it to defend its right to exist, and to be heard.

Again, a time of national crisis is a time when we need to protect the contrarians and the wild-eyed prophets more than ever. In 1918, the US Government threw the socialist Eugene V. Debs into prison on sedition charges for a speech he gave opposing military conscription.It was wrong of the state to treat Debs that way. Thats not exactly the same thing as privately-owned Google deplatforming a bunch of hardcore Calvinists in Idaho, but you see the parallel. Google is using this crisis to exercise its immense power to silence voices it doesnt like.

What constitutes reasonable sensitivity? If you only follow a Bay Area secularists idea of reasonable sensitivity, then youd better throw out the entire Bible, which is not a warm and fuzzy self-help book. What does it mean to capitalize on a natural disaster [or] tragic event? Is drawing conclusions, even conclusions that offend some, the same as capitalizing? What if a speaker said that the pandemic crisis reveals the need for a communist revolution would that violate Googles standards?

It could be that Google deplatformed Team Wilson for reasons that are not apparent in these two sermons. But if these sermons are the cause of Googles act, then I read it as a clear warning to traditional Christians about how Big Tech is going to treat us in the future. Dont think for one second that disapproving of Doug Wilson and his radical churchs teachings is going to protect you, either.

UPDATE: Guys! I am not defending Doug Wilsons teaching or his behavior as leader of the Kirk. As I said at the top of this post, I got into a big online argument with him a few years ago when I criticized him for the way he handled sexual abuse within his community. I am only defending here his right to be heard, and in so doing, point out that even someone with whom I strongly disagree on many things can teach me something.

Read more:

Deplatforming Douglas Wilson - The American Conservative