Ask any tech investor what makes companies like Google and Facebook so insanely valuable, and you'll hear the magic "p" word: because they're platforms.

Geekwire, for instance, devoted a whole podcast last year to "Platform Power: the hidden forces driving the world's top businesses." Platforms, said MIT's Michael Cusimano, "generated roughly the same amount of revenues [as other firms, but] were almost twice as profitable and also much more valuable." Everyone wants to be a platform these days. Uber's not a taxi company--it's a platform! Airbnb: platform. Twitter: platform. Amazon: platform. Etc.

The thing about online platforms is that they're supposed to function as meeting grounds for users without the company itself needing to get too involved, which is what keeps costs down and makes the economics so attractive. Libraries, actually, are old-school platforms. No one would sue a library, for instance, for defamation as a result of a book or magazine it distributed--they'd sue the author or publisher, and the law protects libraries that way.

And that brings us to this week's Big Tech censorship controversy. Facebook and Twitter yesterday took the extraordinary step of limiting users from sharing a New York Post front-page story about the Biden family's dealings in Ukraine. Facebook said it was waiting on outside fact-checkers to review the story's claims. Twitter, by the end of the day, said the problem was the photographs of emails posted with the story and that they didn't want to encourage hacking. Jack Dorsey later admitted their communication about the situation "wasn't great."

As expected, this sent up howls over censorship, bias, double standards, and free speech. But the real issue is whether these companies are platforms, or publishers. And by acting as publishers yesterday--intervening in how political speech gets treated--the companies are at risk of losing the "platform" protections that have underpinned their success.

I mentioned libraries; bookstores and newsstands have also traditionally been exempt from defamation claims. So when internet platforms came around, Congress offered them the same treatment, in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This gave online platforms immunity for users' defamatory, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful content. But, "they only got it because it was assumed that they would operate as impartial, open channels of communication--not curators of acceptable opinion," as City Journal has noted.

Yes, the platforms are encouraged to moderateoffensivespeech--so they can't get in trouble for removing content that is, for instance, "obscene," "excessively violent," or "otherwise objectionable." But courts have ruled that "otherwise objectionable" does not include political speech.

It would seem, in other words, that by limiting political speech, especially in such a high-profile way this week, Facebook and Twitter are practically asking to lose their Section 230 protections. If they did, they would suddenly become liable for everything "published" on their websites; I don't see how they could survive that. Still, investors don't seem too concerned. Shares of each are off only about 2% today after monster gains this year.

A final point: both Trump and Biden have come out in favor of repealing Section 230 altogether, and it would seem to have plenty of public support. But why should that even be necessary? Section 230 could continue to protect online platforms that are genuinely open forums from litigation, while those like Facebook and Twitter (and possibly Google) who choose to moderate speech would lose that protection.

Perhaps that would be the fairest way to "punish" and/or regulate Big Tech; let it fall victim to its own success. Only by becoming so central to the political dialogue and getting sucked into it themselves have these companies now put their entire business model at risk.

More coming up around 2 p.m! See you then...

Kelly

P.S. Click here to listen to The Exchange as a podcast.

Twitter: @KellyCNBC

Instagram: @realkellyevans

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Kelly Evans: The Big Tech censorship confusion - CNBC

Even as the world wrestles with a pandemic and overbearing public health measures, some legislative bodies are taking the opportunity to tighten the screws on speech they don't like. Several bills have passed, others are pending, and one was gutted by court review, but all represent new fronts in government efforts to impose censorship.

For free speech advocates, the luckiest break might have been the fate of a law passed by the French National Assembly in May. While existing requirements give companies 24 hours to take down content alleged by the government to glorify terrorist activity or to constitute child pornography, the new law would have changed that to one hour. In addition, online publishers would have been allowed a day to remove so-called "hate speech."

"The same 24-hour obligation would have applied to content reported for violation of a law that criminalizes speech that promotes, glorifies, or engages in justification of sexual violence, war crimes, crimes against humanity, enslavement, or collaboration with the enemy; a law that criminalizes sexual harassment; and a law that bans pornography where it could be seen by a minoramong others," reports Jacob Schulz at Lawfare. "The law did not carve out any exceptions; the 24-hour rule would have applied even in the case of technical difficulties or temporary surge in notifications."

In June, France's Constitutional Court struck down the vast majority of the law as an unconstitutional threat to freedom of expression. That's really the only good news to report so far.

France's blocked hate-speech law was inspired by Germany's notorious NetzDG law, which makes online platforms liable for illegal content.

"Germany's Network Enforcement Law, or NetzDG requires social media companies to block or remove content that violates one of twenty restrictions on hate and defamatory speech in the German Criminal Code," Diana Lee wrote for Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. "In effect, the NetzDG conscripts social media companies into governmental service as content regulators," with millions of euros in fines hanging over their heads if they guess wrong.

That model of delegated censorship has proven to be as infectious as a viral outbreak, taking hold in over a dozen other countries.

"This raises the question of whether Europe's most influential democracy has contributed to the further erosion of global Internet freedom by developing and legitimizing a prototype of online censorship by proxy that can readily be adapted to serve the ends of authoritarian states," Justitia, a Danish judicial thinktank, warned in a 2019 report.

It's no surprise when countries like Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela emulate intrusive legislation from elsewherethey don't need much encouragement. But we've already seen that French legislators followed in Germany's lead, and lawmakers in the U.K. are poised to do the same.

"In the wrong hands the internet can be used to spread terrorist and other illegal or harmful content, undermine civil discourse, and abuse or bully other people," fretted a 2019 British government paper on "online harms." The paper specifically cited NetzDG as a potential legislative model.

Last week, British lawmakers debated the very broad powers that the government seeks.

Their proposals "introduce a new concept into law'legal but harmful' for online speech," cautions Ruth Smeeth of Index on Censorship. "It's conflating what is already illegal, such as incitement and threat, with speech which we may disagree with, but in a free society is, and should be, legal."

Austria is also considering a NetzDG-inspired law that would require the removal of "content whose 'illegality is already evident to a legal layperson'" explains Martin J. Riedl, a native Austrian and Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism and Media. The law would further encourage compliance by "forbidding their debtors (e.g., businesses who advertise on platforms) to pay what they owe to platforms" that don't conform to the law.

That's expected to encourage even more "overblocking" by platforms worried that they'll face a financial death penalty if they guess wrong as to content's legal status.

Still, Austrians may not be able to out-flank their role models. Germany this summer moved to make NetzDG even more restrictive by adding mandatory "hate speech" reporting requirements.

Brazilian lawmakers, too, are considering legislation that started as NetzDG-inspired before morphing into a campaign against so-called "fake news" (because, apparently, any excuse for controlling speech is a good excuse when you work in government).

"It is vague on the matter of what's considered fake news, which it describes as false or deceptive content shared with the potential to cause individual or collective harm," wrote Brazilian journalist Raphael Tsavkko Garcia for the MIT Technology Review. "This ambiguity leaves it to the state to decide what kind of content is considered false or potentially harmful, and could allow those in power to manipulate the definition for political gain."

The U.S. faces its own speech- and privacy-threatening legislation in the form of the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act of 2020. The legislation, which was introduced in the House of Representatives last month, invokes children and the dangers of child pornography on its way to threatening platforms with the loss of Section 230 protection against liability for content posted by users if they don't adopt government-dictated "best practices."

"The EARN IT bill would allow small website owners to be sued or prosecuted under state laws, as long as the prosecution or lawsuit somehow related to crimes against children," warns the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We know how websites will react to this. Once they face prosecution or lawsuits based on other peoples' speech, they'll monitor their users, and censor or shut down discussion forums."

This world-wide wave of censorship legislation piggy-backs on pandemic-related concerns about the quality of information and the safety of communications available to people confined to their homes. It has sometimes been passed by legislatures empowered by health-related states of emergency. Yet again, a crisis eases the way for governments to accumulate powers that would face greater resistance in happier times.

"Governments around the world must take action to protect and promote freedom of expression during the COVID-19 pandemic, which many States have exploited to crack down on journalism and silence criticism," the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression warned in July.

That timely heads-up is hampered only by the fact that governments are well aware of the situationand consider it a feature, not a bug.

Continue reading here:

German-Style Internet Censorship Catches On Around the World - Reason

The New York Times Guild, the union of employees of the paper of record, tweeted a condemnation on Sundayof one of their own colleagues, op-ed columnist Bret Stephens.Their denunciationwas marred by humiliating typos and even more so by creepy and authoritarian censorship demands and petulant appeals to management for enforcement of company rules against other journalists. To say that this is bizarre behavior from a union of journalists, of all people,is towoefullyunderstate the case.

What angered the union today was an op-ed by Stephens on Friday which voiced numerous criticisms of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project, published last year by the New York Times Magazine and spearheaded by reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones. One of the Projects principal arguments was expressed by a now-silently-deleted sentence that introduced it: that the countrys true birth date is not 1776, as has long been widely believed, but rather late 1619, when, the article claims, the first African slaves arrived on U.S. soil.

Despite its Pulitzer, the 1619 Project has become a hotly contested political and academic controversy, with the Trump administration seeking to block attempts to integrate its assertions into school curriculums,while numerousscholars of history accuse it of radically distorting historical fact, with some, such as Brown Universitys Glenn Loury, calling on the Pulitzer Board to revoke its award. Scholars have also vocally criticized the Times for stealth edits of the articleskey claims long afterpublication, without even noting to readers that it made these substantive changes let aloneexplaining why it made them.

In sum, the still-raging political, historical, and journalistic debate over the 1619 Project has become a majorcontroversy. In his Friday column, Stephens addressed the controversy by first noting the Projects positive contributions and accomplishments,then reviewed in detail the critiques of historians and other scholars of its central claims, and then sided with its critics by arguing that for all of its virtues, buzz, spinoffs and a Pulitzer Prize the 1619 Project has failed.

Without weighing in on the merits of Stephenss critiques, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not, it is hardly debatable that his discussing thisvibrant multi-pronged debate issquarely within his functionas a political op-ed writer at a national newspaper. Stephens himself explained that he took the unusual step of critiquing his ownemployerswork because the 1619 Projecthas become, partly by its design and partly because of avoidable mistakes, a focal point of the kind of intense national debate that columnists are supposed to cover, contending that avoiding writing about it out of collegial deference is to be derelict in our responsibility to participate insocietys significant disputes.

But his colleagues in the New York Times Guildevidentlydo not believe that he had any right to express his views on these debates. Indeed, they are indignant that he did so. In a barely-literate tweet that not once buttwice misspelled the word its as its not a trivial level of ignorance for writers with the worlds most influential newspaper the union denounced Stephensand the paper itself on these grounds:

It is a short tweet, as tweets go, buttheyimpressively managed to pack it with multiple ironies, fallacies, and decreestypical of the petty tyrant. Above all else, thisstatement, and the mentality it reflects, is profoundly unjournalistic.

To start with, this is a case of journalists using their union not to demand greater editorial freedom or journalistic independence something one would reasonably expect from a journalists union but demanding its opposite: that writers at the New York Times be prohibited by management from expressing their views and perspectives about the controversies surrounding the 1619 Project.In other words: They are demanding that their own journalistic colleagues be silenced and censored. What kind of journalists plead with management for greater restrictions on journalistic expression rather than fewer?

Apparently, the answer is New York Times journalists. Indeed, this is not the first time they have publicly implored corporate management to restrict the freedom of expression and editorial freedom of their journalistic colleagues. At the end of July, the Guild issued a series of demands, one of which was that sensitivity reads should happen at the beginning of the publication process, with compensation for those who do them.

For those not familiar with sensitivity reads: consider yourself fortunate. As the New York Times itself reported in 2017, sensitivity readershave been used by book publishers to gut books that have been criticized, in order tovet the narrative for harmful stereotypes and suggested changes. The Guardian explained in 2018that sensitivity readers are a rapidly growing industry in the book publishing world to weed out any implicit bias or potentially objectionable material not just in storylines but even in characters. It quoted the author Lionel Shriver about the obvious dangers: there is, she said, a thin line between combing through manuscripts for anything potentially objectionable to particular subgroups and overt political censorship.

As creepy as sensitivity readers are for fiction writing and other publishing fields, it is indescribably toxic for journalism,which necessarily questions or pokes at rather than bows to the most cherished, sacred pieties. For it to be worthwhile, it must publish material reporting and opinion pieces thatmight be potentially objectionable to all sorts of powerful factions, including culturally hegemonic liberals.

But thisis a function which the New York Times Union wants not merely to avoid fulfilling themselves but, far worse, to deny their fellow journalists. They crave a whole new layer of editorial hoop-jumping in order to get published, a cumbersome, repressive new protocol for drawing even moreconstraining lines around what can and cannot be said beyond the restrictions already imposed by the standard orthodoxies of the Times and their tone-flattening editorial restrictions.

When journalists exploit their unions not to demand better pay, improved benefits, enhanced job security or greater journalistic independence but instead as an instrument for censoring their own journalistic colleagues, then the concept of unions and journalism is wildly perverted.

Then there is the tattletale petulance embedded in the Unions complaint. In demanding enforcement of workplace rules by management against a fellow journalist they do not specify which sacred rule Stephens allegedly violated these union members sound more like human resources assistant managers or workplace informants than they do intrepid journalists. Since when do unions of any kind, but especially unions of journalists, unite to complain that corporate managers and their editorial bosses have been too lax in the enforcement of rulesgoverning what their underlings can and cannot say?

The hypocrisy of the Unions grievance is almost too glaring to even bother highlighting, and is the least ofits sins. The union members denounce Stephens and the paper forgoing after one of its [sic] own and then, in the next breath, publicly vilify their colleagues column because, in their erudite view, it reeks. This is the same union whose members, just a few months ago, quite flamboyantly staged a multi-day social media protest a quite public one ina fit of rage becausethe papers Opinion Editor, James Bennet, published an op-ed by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton advocating the deployment of the U.S. military to repress protests and riots in U.S. cities; Bennet lost his job in the fallout. And many of these same union members now posturing as solemn, righteous opponents of publicly going after ones colleagues notoriously mocked, scorned, ridiculed, and condemned, first privately and then publicly, another colleague, Bari Weiss, until she left the paper, citing these incessant attacks.

Clearly this is not a union that dislikes public condemnations of colleagues. Whatever principle is motivating them, that is plainly not it.

Ive long been a harsh criticof Stephenss (and Weisss) journalism and opinion writing. But it would never occur to me to take steps to try to silence them. If they were my colleagues and published an article I disliked or expressed views I found pernicious, I certainly would not whine to management that they broke the rules and insist that they should not have been allowed to have expressed what they believe.

Thats because Im a journalist, and I know that journalism can have value only if it fosters divergent views and seeks to expand rather thanreduce the freedom of discourse and expression permitted by society and by employers. And whatever one wants to say about Stephenss career and record of writing and Ive had a lot of negative things to say about it harshly critiquingyour own employers Pulitzer-winning series, one beloved by powerful media, political and cultural figures, is thetypeof challenge to power that many journalists who do nothing but spout pleasing, popular pieties love to preen as embodying.

Therehas never been a media outlet where I have worked or where I have been published that did not frequently also publish opinions with which I disagree and articles I dislike, including the one in which I am currently writing. I would readily use my platforms to critique what was published, but it would never even occur to me take steps to try to prevent publication or, worse, issue pitiful public entreaties to management that Something Be Done. If youare eager to constrict the boundaries of expression, why would you choosejournalism of all lines of work? Itd be like someone whobelieves space travel to be an immoral wasteof resources opting to becomean astronaut for NASA.

Perhaps these tawdry episodes should be unsurprising. After all, one major reason that social media companies which never wanted the obligation tocensorbut instead sought to be content-neutral platforms for the transmission of communications in the mold of AT&T turned into active speech regulators was because the public, often led by journalists, began demanding that they censor more. Some journalists even devotesignificant chunks of their careerto publicly complaining thatFacebook and Twitterare failing to enforce their rules by not censoring robustly enough.

A belief in the virtues of free expression was once a cornerstone of the journalistic spirit. Guilds and unions fought against editorial control, notdemandedgreater amountsbe imposed by management. They defended colleagues when they were accused by editorial or corporatebosses of rules violations, not publicly tattled and invited, even advocated for, workplace disciplinary measures.

But a belief in free expression is being rapidly eclipsed in many societal sectors by a belief in the virtues of top-down managerial censorship, silencing, and enhanced workplace punishment for thought and speech transgressions. As this imperious but whiny New York Times Guildcondemnationreflects, this trend can be seen most vividly, and most destructively, in mainstream American journalism. Nothing guts the core function of journalism more than this mindset.

Update: Oct. 11, 2020, 8:40p.m. ETThe New York Times Guild moments ago deleted its tweet denouncing Stephens and the paper, and thenposted this:

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The New York Times Guild Once Again Demands Censorship Of Colleagues - The Intercept

People line up for taxis across the street from the New York Times headquarters in 2013. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

In the New York Times, Emily Bazelon reminds us once again that an enormous number of journalists, law professors, and other academics simply cannot be trusted to defend the First Amendment and, in fact, that they spend an increasing amount of time coming up with what they believe are new arguments for censorship. In a key paragraph, Bazelon writes that:

Its an article of faith in the United States that more speech is better and that the government should regulate it as little as possible. But increasingly, scholars of constitutional law, as well as social scientists, are beginning to question the way we have come to think about the First Amendments guarantee of free speech. They think our formulations are simplistic and especially inadequate for our era.

In addition:

These scholars argue something that may seem unsettling to Americans: that perhaps our way of thinking about free speech is not the best way. At the very least, we should understand that it isnt the only way. Other democracies, in Europe and elsewhere, have taken a different approach. Despite more regulations on speech, these countries remain democratic

There is nothing novel about the arguments presented in Bazelons piece. Indeed, they are exactly the same arguments that have always been made by people who would like to be more powerful than they are. And we are by no means obligated to buy into her euphemisms. When Bazelon writes that democracies, in Europe and elsewhere, have taken a different approach, or that the principle of free speech has a different shape and meaning in Europe, she means that governments in Europe use violence to prevent people from saying things that they dont want them to say. When she refers to regulations on speech she means censorship enforced by the police. When she observes that some liberals have lost patience with rehashing debates about ideas they find toxic, she means that those people have abandoned freedom of expression both legally and culturally, and, having privately decided what is true and what is false, have decided to ruin the lives of anyone who dissents. When she proposes that our formulations are simplistic, she means that people cannot be trusted with the unalienable liberties they inherited, so experts must step into the breach. When she waxes lyrical about the mid-20th century arrangement, during which broadcasters were held to a standard of public trusteeship, in which the right to use the airwaves came with a mandate to provide for democratic discourse, she means that she would like the government to decide which broadcasts counted as a public service and that the public would be better off if given a choice between three different versions of the same thing. When she suggests our way of thinking about free speech is not the best way she means that we should tear up the First Amendment. She can put it how she likes; the answer is No.

All in all, Bazelon provides only two examples of what happens when the First Amendment isnt applied rigorously in the United States, both of which should have been sufficiently horrifying to have made her reconsider her premise:

From 1798 to 1801, more than two dozen people, including several newspaper editors, were prosecuted by the administration of President John Adams under the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made malicious writing a crime. Protesters were also jailed for criticizing the government during World War I.

Whether Bazelon thinks these incidents were good or bad is unclear. Either way, she concludes with the preposterous suggestion that free speech of the sort we enjoy in the United States may, in fact, be an enabler of fascism. Herbert Marcuse has a good deal to answer for, but hes still no master of disguise.

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The Censors Will Never Give Up - National Review

Since late May, fact checks, censors, warnings and even removals have appeared on President Trumps social media posts. Throughout the pandemic, social media companies have been exposed for censoring all kinds of voices, like medical professionals, politicians, event organizers and even the president.

The problem many have with this censorship is that the majority of these voices appear to be conservative-leaning. Is it true that companies like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are silencing those with opinions they dont agree with? Is big tech truly infringing upon the First Amendment and taking away individuals and the presidents right to free speech?

While this narrative has been effective in stirring the emotions of those who agree with the voices being censored, its most likely not the case.

The censorship, which began as far back as March, was introduced by most big social media companies as a method to combat dangerous misinformation regarding the pandemic.

Misinformation is one of the biggest problems related to the pandemic and has made an incredibly complicated issue even more so. Removing harmful, incorrect information from social media sounds like a great step to prevent dangerous underreaction or overaction on a large scale.

However, this was much easier said than done.

Almost immediately, people started to take issue with new censorship policies when posts on Facebook were mistakenly blocked by a bug in their anti-spam system. The blocked posts included sources many thought to be legitimate and well recognized like Buzzfeed and USA Today. The bug was soon corrected, but the conspiracy theories had just begun.

Fox News Tucker Carlson spoke about a viral video on TouTube by doctors who were suggesting that the COVID-19 death count was heavily inflated and that serious policy changes were necessary. The video was taken down by YouTube, and Carlsons main argument was that media giants were silencing any form of dissent from the opinions of those in power. This may sound like something to be seriously worried about, but its actually the exact kind of misinformation that threatens our safety.

The doctors statements, thought by many to be a credible source of information, have since been completely debunked and proved to be filled with a variety of statistical errors. YouTube was right to censor this information as it was false and had it been spread any further, it couldve persuaded the millions who saw it to take the pandemic much less seriously and act accordingly.

On May 26, 2020, Twitter placed the first fact check warning on one of Trumps tweets. The president and many of his supporters were outraged, as it seemed as though Twitter was participating in partisan bias and trying to silence Trump for a difference in political views.

However, when the information contained in the tweet and the surrounding situation is examined closely, it becomes clear why this censorship was justified and necessary for American safety. The tweet was an argument for the theory that mail-in ballots are completely untrustworthy and shouldnt be used in the upcoming election. The reason Trump made this argument wasnt that it was true, but because he knows his supporters are more likely than the opposition to disobey quarantine standards and come out in larger numbers for an in-person event, as they have been for months, to protest the quarantine laws.

The tweet was a political move filled with misinformation that could still put people in danger. This is exactly the kind of censorship that isnt done because of partisan bias, but because false information could put our national health in danger.

Shortly after Trumps tweet was censored, a federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit claiming that these social media agencies were suppressing conservative views.

Evan Holden is a sophomore political science major. Contact Evan at holdened@dukes.jmu.edu.

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Opinion | Is big social media censoring those they disagree with? - The Breeze

Expert witnesses tell the House Intelligence Committee how to best combat misinformation online with more content restriction on social media and posthumous data harvesting from banned accounts.

Today, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a rare open hearing on the subject of Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories Online where expert witnesses testified on best practices for censoring content.

Towards the end of the hearing, Chairman Adam Schiff asked a peculiar question whose answer hints at a future where theres even more censorship and greater amounts of data harvested from social media accounts.

As researchers, as analysts, one of the most important things for us is getting the data on what content, what accounts, what pages, and all of that have been removed Cindy Otis

Schiff asked Alethea Group Vice President of Analysis Cindy Otis what data social media companies are not sharing that they should be sharing in order to help analysts do their work.

Otis responded that getting access to the data from content that had already been removed would be extraordinarily helpful for conducting digital autopsies to find out the strategies, methods, and tactics of social media movements.

As researchers, as analysts, one of the most important things for us is getting the data on what content, what accounts, what pages, and all of that have been removed, Otis testified.

On Facebook, for example, you get an announcement every week or every couple of weeks about the content thats been removed. We get a couple of screen shots maybe. We get maybe an account, maybe a page name that sort of thing but its after the content has been removed.

That sort of data would be extraordinarily helpful as we look at things like current threat actors shifting their operations, what new tactics are they employing, hows this manifesting on the platform Cindy Otis

Otis added, Unless we were particularly tracking that threat or were part of that analysis to begin with, were not able to go back and identify the tactics and procedures that were used by threat actors to do this campaign in the first place.

And so that sort of data would be extraordinarily helpful as we look at things like current threat actors shifting their operations, what new tactics are they employing, how this is manifesting on the platform.

While Otis called for harvesting data posthumously from banned accounts like digital autopsies, Melanie Smith,Head of Analysis at Graphika Inc., testified that big tech platforms should continue to restrict content, so that movements like Qanon would be forced to alternative platforms with smaller audiences.

The best possible solution, here, when we restrict content on mainstream social media is that Qanon will retreat to the fringes, and therefore not be able to be exposed to new audiences and new communities that could be impacted Melanie Smith

She argued that on the so-called alternative platforms, there would be fewer opportunities for the cross-pollination of ideas.

The best possible solution, here, when we restrict content on mainstream social media is that Qanon will retreat to the fringes, and therefore not be able to be exposed to new audiences and new communities that could be impacted, Smith testified.

But it didnt stop with the big tech companies. Smith told the committee that there should also be more pressure on alternative platforms to restrict content after its already been beaten back to the fringes.

We need to be talking to more alternative platforms about restricting content and making a concerted effort in that space, Smith testified.

I also think there could be changes to platform engineering to restrict the exposure of new audiences to algorithmic re-enforcement of some of these ideas, she added.

If you combine the strategies of both Smith and Otis, what you get is more censorship, and then once a user or group is banned, the data is harvested posthumously to discover their tactics.

We need to be talking to more alternative platforms about restricting content and making a concerted effort in that space Melanie Smith

As big tech companies purge thousands of accounts for spreading so-called conspiracy theories, theres a lot of personal data that analysts could have access to if they had their way and if the platforms were to have an obligation to hand over that data.

The data could then be used to track where users go next, and the potential for abuses of privacy is enormous, no matter how well-intended the idea may sound.

Why would the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee ask data analysts what they would need if he wasnt already thinking about a way to obtain that data?

If analyzing data harvested from banned accounts would be so extraordinarily helpful, would there be an incentive to ban even more accounts, so more data could be collected?

Where would it end?

Online censorship is toppling statues that havent been built yet: op-ed

Facebook to censor anything it deems necessary to avoid adverse legal or regulatory impacts

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Censor social media content & harvest data from banned accounts: House Intel witnesses testify on combating misinformation - The Sociable