Daily Archives: December 19, 2020

The pandemic was just beginning to rumble when I agreed to be on the advisory board of the Free Speech Union, run by Toby Young. It had become increasingly clear to anyone with half a brain that freedom of speech including perfectly reasonable as well as horrible exercises of it was badly imperilled.

There was a launch party, with lots of lusty speeches, including one by the Humberside docker visited by the police for his rude tweets about trans people (Were here to check your thinking).

Pandemic aside, this year has turned out to be frenetically preoccupied with freedom of speech, what constitutes it, and who its enemies are. Even our most elite institutions have entered the fray, at the very highest level of engagement.

And finally, some progress seems to have been made. Last week, woke-deranged Cambridge pulled up its socks: a policy requiring staff and students to be respectful of all other views was rejected by the universitys governing body.

Academics rightly saw that criticism and disagreement could be attacked and shut down as disrespect so long as that respect clause stayed in. Arif Ahmed, a reader in philosophy, spearheaded the revolt, comparing the atmosphere at Cambridge to that of the Salem witch hunts of the 17th century.

Respect was duly changed to tolerate. There will be less room for no-platforming, and a good thing, too. This is, after all, the Cambridge where students at Clare College recently bayed for the suspension of a porter who resigned from the city council over a motion pertaining to trans rights, and where countless attempts to bully, censor and sack in the name of social justice have come to define its culture.

The Cambridge policy tweak has come at the end of a year of unprecedented curtailment of free speech. Following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May, Black Lives Matter burst on the scene with revolutionary ambitions for dismantling our culture in its entirety. Accusations of racism soon veered wildly off piste, becoming another means of control and suppression used to sack dissenters and terrify institutions.

Mission accomplished.

High-profile, chilling sackings (or forced resignations) included that of James Bennet, the New York Times opinion page editor whose crime was to run a comment piece by Republican senator Tom Cotton that argued the US military should be deployed if police couldnt get the riots under control. Stockwell Day, a former Canadian cabinet minister, lost three jobs in June after saying on a televised debate that Canada is not a [systemically] racist country while also saying our system needs to be improved.

Meanwhile, the world watched as JK Rowling was flayed on Twitter her crime being her stated belief that sex is biological. Last month, the prize-winning feminist columnist Suzanne Moore left the Guardian after a letter signed by 338 staff suggested views such as hers (she wrote in favour of biological women-only spaces) made the paper transphobic.

The Cambridge vote was certainly positive. But it is important, as we fight for this core value of freedom of speech, that we remain vigilant against slipperiness and hastiness. In this regard, Im not so sure about the Cambridge success. Is it really? Tolerate is a murky word. Doesnt freedom include the right to storm out of a lecture?

Nor am I sure I liked vice-chancellor Stephen Toopes slightly snaky statement that all those with lawful views are included in this toleration clause. Didnt he mean lawful speech? Views are private unless expressed. Toope seems to be implying that you can have illegal opinions. This may have been a slip, but it was a telling one.

Such slipperiness is perhaps to be expected at the top in woke Cambridge. But while free-speech warriors are less prone to slipperiness, we must be careful to avoid sloppiness. The row at Eton is an example, where an English master was sacked after recording a virtual lesson that included a misogynistic, antifeminist video (the two do not necessarily go together, but in this case they do).

The video in question was not appropriate for schoolboys under the guise of education, and teachers cant simply say whatever they want. In this case, its author was disciplined for refusing to recant, and thats fair enough. Yes, it iswrong and unfair that when equally pernicious stuff is fed to schoolchildren under the guise of diversity and inclusion, nobody is punished. But we must be careful not to confuse the curtailment of the inappropriate with the curtailment of the free.

Our battle is far from won and we cant afford to cry wolf when the issue is actually a poodle.

You can read Zoe Strimpels column every Sunday at telegraph.co.uk. Click here to read last week's column

Read more:
Cambridge may have won the battle for free speech - but this war is far from over - Telegraph.co.uk

Section 230 shields an ecosystem. Rather than protecting particular platforms or offering separate rules for different sorts of services, it protects all internet intermediaries equally, regardless of their size, purpose, or policies. Under this uniform, predicable arrangement, specific platforms may set their own rules, choosing to cater to mass audiences or niche subcultures and governing their services accordingly. Diversity of opinion marks the whole system but not every platform therein. This liberal, decentralized approach remains the best mechanism for ensuring freedom of speech online.

Section 230 was intended to let athousand platforms bloom, ensuring that, according to the Congressional findings that precede the bills substantive sections:

The Internet and other interactive computer services offer aforum for atrue diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.

Crucially, this expectation was made of the internet as awhole, or, the internet and other interactive computer services, when taken together, not specific services. Unfortunately, critics of the policies of particular platforms such as Twitter and Facebook increasingly misread this expectation as relating to individual platforms.

In aFederalist Society Blog post titled Section 230 and the Whole First Amendment, Craig Parshall, General Counsel of the National Religious Broadcasters, claims that Section 230 was intended to incentivize individual tech platforms to open themselves to all speech.

The intent behind Section 230 was to incentivize tech platforms to screen out harmful and offensive content while also providing a forum for atrue diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad of avenues for intellectual activity.

It is time that they be required to live up to their part of the bargain; namely, expressly conditioning their protection under Section 230in return for their use of aFirst Amendment free speech paradigm for their decisions on thirdparty content.

Setting aside the problem of how platforms might be expected to screen offensive and harmful material while simultaneously mirroring the First Amendment, by substituting tech platforms for the internet, Parshall dramatically alters Section 230s expectations.

More recently, Conservative Partnership Institute Policy Director Rachel Bovard makes the switch in an opinion piece for USA Today;

Internet platforms would receive aliability shield so they could voluntarily screen out harmful content accessible to children, and in return they would provide aforum for true diversity of political discourse and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.

By narrowing the internet to particular internet platforms,Bovard and Parshall invent aSection 230 that demands diversity within platforms, rather than between them. The expectation that all platforms offer truly diverse forums amounts to an expectation of uniformity in platform policy. If all platforms must serve as a forum for atrue diversity of political discourse, none may serve particular communities. This leveling would perversely render the internet as awhole far less diverse than it is today. Instead of Ravelry offering aplatform for knitters and TheDonald.win offering ahome for unfiltered MAGA fandom, Bovard and Parshall would have both platforms host it all. Taking anarrow view of the internet as ahandful of major platforms, they propose systemic changes that would put the diversity they ignore on the chopping block.

Their unworkable expectation is at odds with aplain reading of the statute and the intentions of Section 230s drafters, Representatives Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Chris Cox (R-CA). In arecent letter to the Federal Communications Commission objecting to its efforts to modify the statute via rulemaking, they write:

In our view as the laws authors, this requires that government allow athousand flowers to bloomnot that asingle website has to represent every conceivable point of view. The reason that Section 230 does not require political neutrality, and was never intended to do so, is that it would enforce homogeneity: every website would have the same neutral point of view. This is the opposite of true diversity.

By allowing individual websites to screen offtopic or otherwise objectionable, Section 230 ensures that online communities and service providers can chose whatever rules or standards they think most fitting for their particular corner of the internet.

All platforms have rules intended to foster particular sorts and styles of conversation. Some are enforced by moderators or bots, while others are built in to the platforms architecture. Twitter maintains rules against threats of violence, and the platform will not allow an account to post more than 100 tweets in an hour. Even ostensibly ungoverned platforms maintain rules. 4chan is divided into topic specific image boards for everything from Papercraft &Origami to Adult Cartoons.

Because online real estate is an unlimited resource, for those who find agiven ruleset illfitting, exit is cheap. Section 230s intermediary liability protections keep the cost of exit low by preventing platforms from being held liable for their users speech. While The Atlantic staff writer Kaitlyn Tiffany calls this capacity for exit the internets structural penchant for hate, it prevents any single set of platform rules from creating auniversal prohibition. Unlike legal speech restrictions, unwanted platform restrictions are intended to be avoided through the creation of competing jurisdictions.

This is particularly important for explicitly dissident alternatives to mainstream platforms. Both TheDonald.win and Ovarit were created as offplatform alternatives to banned subreddits. For these burgeoning, essentially moderatorrun forums, the fact that they regularly hostspeech deemed impermissible by Reddit would serve as amagnet for litigation in the absence of Section 230.

Indeed, at atime when traditional media gatekeepers have deemed migration to Parler a threat to democracy, and treat podcast apps as the next front in an unending War on Disinformation, intermediary liability protections are vital speech protections. Advocates of liberal speech governance should refrain from reading expectations of uniformity into Section 230. Undermining protections for diverse approaches to content moderation will serve only to nip alternatives to mainstream platforms in the bud.

More:
Section 230 and the Whole Internet | Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute

Four years ago, just prior to the November election, I wrote an article titled Hillary Should Have a Catholic Problem. I started by citing numerous articles in the national press that proclaimed Donald Trump was having difficulty winning over Catholics a key voting bloc in any candidates run for the presidency. In fact, according to Pew Research Center polls, Trump ended up taking 52% of the Catholic vote in 2016 to Hillary Clintons 45%.

At this writing, we are still awaiting the final steps in the process of confirming the winner of the 2020 presidential election, but some voter data is already available. According to a poll of more than 110,000 voters conducted for the Associated Press, American Catholics were more evenly split this year between support for President Donald Trump (50%) and Democratic challenger Joe Biden (49%) who, unlike Clinton, is Catholic.

Both during the campaign and since the election, the press has made much of Bidens Catholicism, describing in glowing terms how he will be bringing his faith to bear on the issues were told Catholics care about most: the environment, racism and fairer wealth redistribution.

Conspicuously absent from these puff pieces, however, are hard-hitting questions about how Biden reconciles his Catholicism with his positions vis-a-vis abortion and related issues. But its a fair guess that if those positions were to hew closer to Catholic teaching, Biden would not only not receive the kid-glove treatment in the media; he likely never would have been the Democratic nominee. As it is, Bidens own words and actions suggest that his positions are contrary to Catholic teaching and, more broadly, American concepts of freedom of speech and religion.

For example, this past July, Biden stated that if he were elected president, he would strip away the protection that the Little Sisters of the Poor have fought up to the United States Supreme Court twice to obtain: the dispensation eventually granted by the Trump administration permitting them to refrain from providing or paying for contraceptives for their employees. Additionally, Bidens campaign website contained his promise to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law; to eliminate state laws restricting or regulating abortion; and to repeal the Hyde Amendment, thus requiring taxpayer funding of abortion.

Since the election, Biden, in his capacity as putative president-elect, has begun to name the members of his Cabinet. On Dec. 6, Biden announced that former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is his nominee for secretary of health and human services.

It is hard to see this choice as unifying or healing in the eyes of pro-life Catholics. Not only is Becerra not a medical professional (as many had hoped Bidens HHS choice would be) but he was also the defendant in the 2018 National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra U.S. Supreme Court case. The plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of Californias FACT Act, the Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency Act, which Becerra vigorously defended. The statute in question required pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to post specific notices mandated by the state that included the location and availability of abortion services elsewhere. The Supreme Court struck down the law as a violation of the First Amendment right of free speech.

Becerras role in the Reproductive FACT Act litigation was not his first foray into abortion politics: He sued the Trump administration in 2017 for the contraception exemption it had granted the Little Sisters of the Poor. During his two decades in Congress, he voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act and the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

Becerra, like Biden, is Catholic.

Becerra is clearly comfortable using the power of government to compel speech and behavior even when it conflicts with deeply held beliefs. What else, besides contraception and abortion, might this compulsion be applied to? The Affordable Care Act delegates significant rulemaking authority to the Department of Health and Human Services. Will Bidens HHS seek to place transgender surgeries and physician-assisted suicide under the umbrella of health care? If so, what will the rules be for Catholic or any other medical professionals and hospitals that object to these procedures on religious or moral grounds? While the Trump administration has been strongly supportive of conscience protection for health care workers, the Biden camp has signaled its antipathy toward those arguments. Given Bidens own statements and his Cabinet choices it is reasonable to anticipate that an HHS run by Becerra in a Biden administration will be one that quickly announces that Catholic individuals and organizations must provide and/or pay for contraception and must provide whatever the government decides is health care.

A recent article in the Jesuit magazine America quotes former President Barack Obamas faith adviser Michael Wear, who characterized Bidens political strategy as having been vindicated by his performance among Catholic voters in swing states.

If one looks only at the election results, perhaps. More long term? I think that remains to be seen.

Laura Hollis column is syndicated by Creators.

See the article here:
Hollis: Will Joe Biden have a 'Catholic problem'? - The Winchester Star

Washington, D.C. Congressman Fred Keller (R-Pa.) has joined his colleagues from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in demanding that Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) hold an emergency hearing about online censorship in light of the news that Hunter Biden's business dealings are under federal investigation.

House Oversight Republicans claim that a New York Post article regarding Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings was censored by Facebook and Twitter. The committee further expressed concerns of political bias among large tech companies and the silencing of conservative voices and values. Chairwoman Maloney refused to hold a hearing about the issue.

Last week, Hunter Biden confirmed that his taxes are indeed under federal investigation. In response, the Oversight Republicans sent a second letter to Chairwoman Maloney demanding an emergency hearing about censorship.

On the second letter, Congressman Fred Keller made the following statement:

Despite Big Techs censorship of Americans free speech in the Hunter Biden cover-up, we now know he is under federal investigation. This level of unchecked censorship is unacceptable and has no place in the United States. I urge Chairwoman Maloney to hold an emergency hearing to hold Big Tech accountable for its clear violations of Americans free speech.

The full text of the letter follows:

Dear Madam Chairwoman:

On October 15, 2020, we requested you hold an emergency hearing on Big Techs repeated efforts to interfere in the 2020 election. At that timejust days before the November 3, 2020 presidential electionFacebook and Twitter censored a news article about Joe Bidens son, Hunter Biden, regarding his Ukrainian business dealings while his father was Vice President.These Big Tech companies both limited and/or denied distribution of the New York Posts report, and Twitter locked the New York Posts account.

Last week, both Hunter Biden and the Biden-Harris Transition Team acknowledged Hunter Biden is under federal investigation for his tax affairs. Reporting indicates this investigation is related to his overseas business dealings. In light of Hunter Bidens admission that he is under investigation, especially after Big Techs unjustifiable censorship of the New York Posts report, we are renewing our hearing request. Big Techs silencing of viewpoints and censorship of news undermines our electoral process, our institutions, and our U.S. Constitution.

As we explained in our October 15 letter, shortly after the New York Post posted its story on Facebook the company reduc[ed] its distribution in an apparent attempt to limit access to the story. Just as concerning, Facebook reportedly refused to answer basic questions about its decision. Twitter also censored the article and warned users that it is potentially spammy or unsafe, and locked the New York Posts Twitter account.

As Hunter Biden admitted last week, he is under federal investigation regarding his taxes, potentially related in part to the very matters the New York Post reported, yet for which it was censored. Indeed, additional reporting from NBC News refers to a 2017 email to Hunter Biden regarding his income from Burisma and need to amend Bidens 2014 tax returns to reflect the unreported income. An NBC spokesperson did not dispute the authenticity of the email, which came from a laptop dropped off at a computer hardware store in Delawarethe same laptop and same computer hardware store discussed in the New York Posts October 14 article censored by Big Tech for being potentially spammy or unsafe. Big Techs effort to selectively limit speech based on political affiliation is a disturbing patten[sic] of censorship in our nationa nation that holds out the First Amendments right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press as two of our most paramount freedoms.

As Big Tech platforms continue to limit speech based on political ideology, we must immediately hold a hearing to learn who are responsible for making these decisions and what policies enable Big Tech to selectively limit and/or censor speech on social media. We reiterate our request the Committee hold an emergency hearing on this important matter as soon as possible.

See the original post here:
Republican members of Oversight and Reform Commission demand emergency hearing about online censorship - NorthcentralPa.com

Brandi Chambless

American corporations, in general, once the most revolutionary business models, were historically spawned from centralized structures that carried heavy-handed decisions mandated downward from the top.

Now that corporations are witnessing some relinquishment of the authority of influence to middle administration or derived from customer feedback, the consideration is generally pointed toward a tangible product or service and its potential impact on the bottom line.

There is an underlying current from experts that corporations who did not evolve into this new model voluntarily disadvantage themselves by choosing the limiting growth factor of clinging to power as a means of maintaining control.

Today, there is a relevant example of another type of product being mass manufactured in America and throughout the entire global ecosystem. It is the product of ideology influence, the ability to produce ideas that impact the thoughts and value systems of society.

The manufacturing site is a perfect location: the American media machine. The great American media debacle is being commandeered by a centralized corporation in a decentralizing world.

The media giant, Facebook, is said to be more powerful than government, as an estimated 44.3 million cable network users will have cut the cord by the end of 2020. This is understandably so, with online impressions touting a mere $3 per impression compared to traditional media averaging $28 per impression.

The advantage of the centralized Facebook manufacturing epicenter: Real time news that is free to the user as the advertisers are paying for it. The recent disadvantage: the scramble to stop what Zuckerberg and crew consider a false narrative, though censorship has potentially driven out even faithful users to seek asylum elsewhere.

Because of the centralized control of not only social media powers, but also traditional media, some 70 million Americans on either side of the worldview are seeking truth on issues from Russiagate to Pizzagate to Votergate.

The bi-partisan desire for reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has been championed by those in the legislative branch of government in an effort with personal protections and freedom in mind. Because of this phenomenon, along with recent election rhetoric censorship for both conservative and liberal thinkers depending on region, decentralized media factories are progenating as quickly as the garage bands of the 1960s. In the current political climate of America, Facebook users are leaving the once familiar platform for alternatives such as MeWe, while Twitter users are leaving their tweets behind to microblog in Parler.

Parler CEO John Matze calls a decentralized model one that gives choices to the influencers and users, rather than keeping all the power at the top of the organization. Still privately held, Matze asks users of all persuasions to join the free speech platform devoid of ideology indoctrination, though to his chagrin the site has unexpectedly morphed into either a post-election refugee camp for conservatives to rally the troops, or a future terrorist self-registry of sycophants, depending upon the particular user worldview.

The disadvantage to a media corporation for hoarding power at the top has diluted the its once almighty voice, resulting in rendering power to that of what they might call the common housewife, who after recent mistrust of the mainstream media now expresses her own freedom of speech into the ready ears of a willing listener.

The possible advantage to the traditional media for holding the line with its centralized center will be found in whether a privately-owned company like Parler can continue to fund the decentralized business model. A mainstay tenet of decentralized media younglings will be all power to the people to boycott individual ideology craftsmen with whom their message does not clearly resonate.

At this time it is too early to predict whether decentralized media corporations like Parler will have enough staying power to go public or to be bought out by someone who has an expressed agenda of offering users an American platform with its sole product, free speech.

Further, the decentralization of the American media machine is nothing other than a magnifying glass over the evidence of the great American divide in ideology, the by-product of what has historically been fair and equitable reporting that allows the hearer to make up his or her own mind. Scientists and archaeologists alike, have long been predicting this trouble to America, knowing not whether to call it a name like Civil War or just plain division.

Fueling the scientific discussion in a world where everyone is making their own predictions, is everything from street rioting to phenomenons in the sky such as the 2017 solar eclipse. It was the first to cross the entire American mainland since 1776, making an exit right over Fort Sumter in Charleston where the first shots of the Civil War were fired.

With regard to extrapolating lines of the media-driven fracture of American ideology, scientists have raised an eyebrow as they await a similar natural, yet symbolic, phenomenon scheduled to occur seven years removed in 2024. This time, the phenomenon will complete the second half of a giant X across America, intersecting at the heart of the country, in a most unpretentious place of Carbondale, IL. In spite of being nothing to brag about, Carbondale, also known as Little Egypt, is a sitting time bomb on the New Madrid Fault Line.

So, as the unraveling of mainstream media ensues with the possibility of a new American Civil War at stake, the man that has been the hopeful Deliverer to at least half of the country is steadily continuing to tweet his thoughts at will, as his supporters are making their exit to Parler.

Of course, it is no coincidence that the new American Civil War has already begun virtually. After all, it is still 2020 and this is how we do it now.

Link:
The Soapbox: The unraveling of the American media corporation - The Cross Timbers Gazette

It feels like a self-fulfilling irony that anyone writing a book about cancel culture will themselves be cancelled before the printers start rolling. It is thus no surprise that Julie Burchill, a fearless writer whose profession is provocation, has run into trouble ahead of the release of Welcome to the Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics.

The book had been scheduled for release in April 2021 as the latest diatribe against our censorious age. Cynics rightly note that complaining about cancellation is good business for many authors. But although the silencing can be overstated, the Burchill case shows that many in this country want to make blasphemy unacceptable, at least for one religion.

Burchill had stumbled across a tweet by Ash Sarkar, a journalist from the far-Left platform Novara Media. Sarkar was complaining about a Spectator article from eight years ago in which Rod Liddle joked that he could not become a teacher because he could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids.

Its astonishing that both he and his editor thought guffawing about hypothetically being a paedophile made for a good article, Sarkar said, presumably hoping that editors would stop joking about such things.

Having stumbled across this Twitter drama, Burchill ill-advisedly waded in by accusing Sarkar of inconsistency because of her Muslim faith. According to some interpretations, one of Muhammads wives, Aisha, was just 9 years old when the marriage was consummated. Burchill put the case delicately: I dont WORSHIP a paedophile. If Aisha was 9, YOU do.

There is considerable dispute over the exact nature of Muhammads relationship with Aisha and her age, as you might expect. The history of religion is largely the history of people arguing over the interpretation of texts.

While I doubt that Burchill is a scholar on such matters, the response to her comments was unjustified. Sarkar accused Burchill of Islamophobia and even outright racism, joined by the likes of Owen Jones from the Guardian. Before the dust could settle, Burchills publisher Little, Brown announced it would no longer be releasing her book.

While there is no legal definition of hate speech in the UK, we believe that Julies comments on Islam are not defensible from a moral or intellectual standpoint, that they crossed a line with regard to race and religion, and that her book has now become inextricably linked with those views, the company explained. Naturally, this was preceded by the usual guff about believing passionately in freedom of speech and a willingness to publish controversial authors.

Some passion. One can only hope that Little, Browns romance novels are more hot-blooded. But such moral cowardice is understandable as political pressure from both left and right makes people increasingly wary of criticising Islam.

Among those menacing free speech are Islamist extremists who threaten violence against those perceived to have insulted Islam. Examples are legion, but lately they include the French teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded after discussing cartoons of Muhammad with his class during a debate on free speech.

At the same time progressives are increasingly prone to treat any slight against Islam as an attempt to stoke prejudice and discrimination. The effect of this, intended or otherwise, is to discourage people from criticising Islam for fear of being branded a bigot.

This contrasts with British history, during much of which progressives sought to make criticising socially conservative religions legally and morally acceptable. The inconsistency in the case of Islam is because of its association with ethnic minorities, some of whom face harassment or worse because of negative attitudes about Muslims.

British hate speech laws have to tread a fine line between stopping such abuse while enabling criticism of the religion. The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 contained a specific clause protecting discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents.

Such laws would protect Monty Pythons Life of Brian, were it made today, as well as productions such as The Book of Mormon. It also enabled the media to destroy Tim Farrons leadership of the Liberal Democrats by asking him difficult questions about his evangelical Christian attitude to homosexuality.

There is no good reason why Islam should be exempt from such satire or scrutiny, however insolent or offensive it may be. Nor should Muslims expect their beliefs or their Prophet to be above criticism. In a free society, their faith, like any other spiritual or political set of beliefs, should be open to mockery, derision or even outright abuse. The assumption that any slight against Islam must be motivated by racial prejudice has warped public debate in Britain for too long already. The Burchill affair shows why such kneejerk reactions are so pernicious.

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The Julie Burchill Affair: why mocking Islam is not hate speech - TheArticle