Thank you for writing this! You can see that so far the other commenters are harping on hypocrisy, forgetting that it’s “the tribute that vice plays to virtue”.
The idea of free speech matters, and Zuck pledging allegiance to it ought to matter, but I fear it’s become “right-coded” over the last ten years, and will take more than my lifetime to correct.
It is strange to value moderation more after witnessing what this brand of free speech gets us under Musk’s leadership…then continue to insist on the value of free speech on Meta. Why would it produce anything different than what you find disdainful about X
Additionally, conversations about free speech always happen in these abstract vacuums that seem divorced from the impact of speech on society. Come at this from a critical lense by asking if there is such a thing as harmful speech? Is there any type of speech that sets society back at scale? And if so, what makes those harms worth it? Why shouldn’t we hold platforms accountable for their role in spreading misinformation or amplifying messages that actually drive violent behavior?
I appreciate the argument here, and yes, it's important that these platforms push back against government efforts to suppress political speech. But I think about comments from Maria Ressa, founder of The Rappler in the Philippines, who said in a recent interview that in countries like the Philippines or in Myanmar, this isn't a question of free speech but of "life and death." (Facebook was found to be widely used by promoters of a genocide campaign in Myanmar and by former Pres. Duterte for his kill lists.) But you don't even have to go that far afield. In Shasta County, here in California, Facebook was used to organize militia groups that actively targeted local officials, organizers, journalists with violence, intimidation, etc. I've visited numerous rural communities across California where whole populations—homeless, immigrant, low-income, vulnerable—have been and continue to be the targets of campaigns of violence organized and spurred on through Facebook. So, as always, there is the rarified, 30k ft view from on high and then the far messier, bloodier reality on the ground. Not sure how to square that circle but even less sure about leaving it to Zuck and his ilk to figure it out.
Thank you for this. I see two counterarguments. 1) incitement to violence is not legally protected speech; 2) incitement to violence is not political speech in the sense I am talking about in my article. So I would see no problem suppressing kill lists and calls to genocide -- quite the contrary, those should be suppressed.
It is not, as you suggest, unconstitutional for a federal agency to *ask* a social media platform (or any other media outlet) not to publish certain information. ("The FBI more than once sent emails to Zuckerberg asking him to censor content about the pandemic and the famous Hunter Biden story. This . . . is also probably unconstitutional.") As the Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed, the First Amendment is only violated when request from the government to remove speech is coupled with a coercive threat. The Court most recently addressed this issue last term in NRA v. Vullo, in which it discussed the distinction between "permissible attempts to persuade and impermissible attempts to coerce." The test used to distinguish persuasion (or mere begging) from coercive action, reaffirmed in Vullo, is as follows: "a plaintiff must plausibly allege conduct that, viewed in context, could be reasonably understood to convey a threat of adverse government action in order to punish or suppress the plaintiff ’s speech."
I don't take issue with your thesis that free speech vibes are good. The problem is that Zuckerberg and his ilk aren't actually victims of federal government efforts to suppress viewpoints (see also, e.g., Murthy v. Missouri from last year regarding government requests that FB and others remove COVID misinformation). Facebook, X, etc. spread protected and unprotected speech alike ("true threats," for example, have no constitutional protection). The government has the power to regulate the latter under the First Amendment and, in at least some cases, it has a responsibility to take reasonable and lawful steps to mitigate harm caused by certain protected speech (like health or election misinformation). The First Amendment gives Zuckerberg and co the right to decline the government's requests to remove protected speech (including misinformation) from their platforms, but those platforms are not protected from the mere request.
I would agree with you IF Zuck were ridding his platforms of censorship. But, as of today, searching for hashtags of: #democrat, #fucktrump, #dnc, #voteblue & many other left tags, are blocked on insta. While the hashtags: #republican, #fuckjoebiden, #rnc, #votered & any other right tags, return all the results you could ever want.
Explain to me how his actions work to our benefit. Because I'm not seeing it.
Santi, you missed an opportunity to highlight the most important thing, which is always and everywhere Republican chicanery and hypocrisy. Even if there were something to the Hunter Biden story (which there was more than enough reason to doubt because 1) it was leaked to a worthless propaganda rag, the NY Post 2) by the notoriously dishonest Rudy Giuliani), the FBI did not ask Meta to censor it but only to watch out for Russian pro-Trump bot hits, which there had been in abundance in 2016. But even more important, when Republicans had an opportunity to punish an even more flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional act than anything Biden was accused of, namely Trump's attempt at extortion by threatening to withhold Congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine unless Zelensky announced an investigation into Hunter Biden, and every single Republican senator voted not guilty.
Never forget: however bad Meta or the FBI or the Democratic Party may be, the Republican Party is always much, much worse.
"Zuckerberg told Rogan: "The background here is that the FBI came to us - some folks on our team - and was like 'hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that'."
He said the FBI did not warn Facebook about the Biden story in particular - only that Facebook thought it "fit that pattern".
Here is what the dedicatee of one of your books has written about the Hunter affair:
“What this means is that, in the crucial days leading up to the 2020 presidential election, most of the corporate media spread an absolute lie about The New York Post's reporting in order to mislead and manipulate the American electorate. It means that Big Tech monopolies, along with Twitter, censored this story based on a lie from “the intelligence community.” It means that Facebook's promise from its DNC operative that it would suppress discussion of the reporting in order to conduct a "fact-check” of these documents was a fraud because if an honest one had been conducted, it would have proven that Facebook’s censorship decree was based on a lie. It means that millions of Americans were denied the ability to hear about reporting on the candidate leading all polls to become the next president, and instead were subjected to a barrage of lies about the provenance (Russia did it) and authenticity (disinformation!) of these documents.”
My admiration for Greenwald has diminished somewhat in recent years, as the volume of his voice has increased and the level of detail and acuteness of reasoning in his writing has decreased, as illustrated in this piece.
(1) His opening sentence announces that the Post published articles "about the business dealings of Democratic front-runner Joe Biden" in various countries. Neither of the two Post articles he cites says anything about Joe Biden's foreign business dealings.
(2) He refers to "suppression of the story by US corporate media." Of course one thinks immediately of the NY Times, WashPost, WSJ, LATimes. Did they all suppress or misreport the story? If so, why doesn't Greenwald say so and supply citations? His only reference to any of them is to mention that the Times ran a story -- before the election -- noting that the "Russian disinformation" charge had not been proved.
(3) Your post said the FBI had pressured Meta to censor mentions of the Hunter Biden laptop story. If this had been true, I can't imagine Greenwald wouldn't have mentioned it.
(4) It is perfectly obvious that the media were wary of this story in large part because 1) the Republican Party, always dishonest, had spread a very damaging lie about the leading Democratic presidential contender in 2004; 2) a last-minute pseudo-revelation about the Democratic presidential candidate had gravely damaged her election chances in 2016; 3) the Russian intelligence services very definitely did interfere on Facebook on Trump's behalf and contact Trump's campaign, which did not report their approach to the FBI, as they were required to, but met several times with them, even though nothing substantial was planned; and 4) as president (and before), Trump's m.o. was chronic, compulsive dishonesty, exemplified unsurpassably by Rudy Giuliani. Rightly or wrongly, the media were determined not to be suckered again. The old, fair-minded Greenwald would have duly mentioned this context.
(5) Suppose every charge made by Greenwald and the Post above were true. How does it compare to Trump's innumerable financial offenses: cheating on his taxes, stiffing his workers, racial discriminating in his rental properties, directing the Secret Service to stay at his hotels at inflated prices, offering to sell energy policy to the energy industry for a $1 billion campaign contribution; using campaign donations for legal expenses; floating a bitcoin on his first day in office; and using improper political influence in making virtually deal in his long, sordid real-estate career? It doesn't compare at all, of course.
I wish Greenwald (and some WOC contributors) would have a sense of proportion. When it comes to malfeasance, going after Democrats rather than Republicans is like a small-town police department devoting all its resources to making sure no one in town is driving with a broken tail-light while a gaggle of serial murderers is on the loose.
For me, and for what you bring up here, it's more important that we tie the issue of free speech to Facebook's role in law enforcement. If we are saying that people can say/do anything they want on Facebook now, is Facebook going to report into law enforcement if, say, women are talking about their own experiences with birth control, miscarriages, and abortions? It's disingenuous to only talk about the "I can say whatever I want" without also addressing the consequences of saying whatever you want in an increasingly hostile and militant state that intends to criminalize what used to be legal actions. If Facebook stopped providing user data to law enforcement, I would agree with your argument, but there are a lot of sides to "free speech" besides "content moderation."
When it becomes difficult to defend the free speech rights of people one detests, I find this helps: bash them mercilessly while defending their right to speak. For example:
"These complete assholes deserve the right to speak as much as the rest of us." Or:
"Don't make these cockroaches martyrs by censoring them."
The misconception here of course is that anonymous speech is free speech. Social media's critical flaw is not that it allows anyone to say anything, it's that' everyone can hide their identity while saying anything.
I agree with you Santiago. I'm a free speech absolutist. I'll go one farther and admit that anonymity can be a tool of resistance. But even Thomas Paine wouldn't need to write anonymously if his country (Britain) had respected speech as a right.
To put it another way: "say what you want and always own your words". The people wonder why society is fraying when the self-correction of being appraised for your words by society was ripped out of it by Meta and the like (overnight).
Glad to see this article. The Hunter Laptop showed the letter from Burisma stating that Hunter needed to earn his pay and have the investigation against them stopped. Not long after Biden threatens to not sent money to Ukraine if this prosecutor is not fired. That was not Russian disinformation but corruption in the Biden family. Look it up.
This would be believable about freedom of speech if the platforms did not already censor posts at the request of or in fear of different countries governments,, not just the U.S.. I believe there were reports that India's Modi, Turkey's Erdogan and MBS were able to get posts curtailed. What is being advanced is the freedom to lie freely without being checked on a platform.
Then why is it suddenly impossible to post a story about Luigi on TikTok? It wasn't before you don't have to censor things you don't allow to be posted.
Thank you for writing this! You can see that so far the other commenters are harping on hypocrisy, forgetting that it’s “the tribute that vice plays to virtue”.
The idea of free speech matters, and Zuck pledging allegiance to it ought to matter, but I fear it’s become “right-coded” over the last ten years, and will take more than my lifetime to correct.
It is strange to value moderation more after witnessing what this brand of free speech gets us under Musk’s leadership…then continue to insist on the value of free speech on Meta. Why would it produce anything different than what you find disdainful about X
Additionally, conversations about free speech always happen in these abstract vacuums that seem divorced from the impact of speech on society. Come at this from a critical lense by asking if there is such a thing as harmful speech? Is there any type of speech that sets society back at scale? And if so, what makes those harms worth it? Why shouldn’t we hold platforms accountable for their role in spreading misinformation or amplifying messages that actually drive violent behavior?
I appreciate the argument here, and yes, it's important that these platforms push back against government efforts to suppress political speech. But I think about comments from Maria Ressa, founder of The Rappler in the Philippines, who said in a recent interview that in countries like the Philippines or in Myanmar, this isn't a question of free speech but of "life and death." (Facebook was found to be widely used by promoters of a genocide campaign in Myanmar and by former Pres. Duterte for his kill lists.) But you don't even have to go that far afield. In Shasta County, here in California, Facebook was used to organize militia groups that actively targeted local officials, organizers, journalists with violence, intimidation, etc. I've visited numerous rural communities across California where whole populations—homeless, immigrant, low-income, vulnerable—have been and continue to be the targets of campaigns of violence organized and spurred on through Facebook. So, as always, there is the rarified, 30k ft view from on high and then the far messier, bloodier reality on the ground. Not sure how to square that circle but even less sure about leaving it to Zuck and his ilk to figure it out.
Thank you for this. I see two counterarguments. 1) incitement to violence is not legally protected speech; 2) incitement to violence is not political speech in the sense I am talking about in my article. So I would see no problem suppressing kill lists and calls to genocide -- quite the contrary, those should be suppressed.
It is not, as you suggest, unconstitutional for a federal agency to *ask* a social media platform (or any other media outlet) not to publish certain information. ("The FBI more than once sent emails to Zuckerberg asking him to censor content about the pandemic and the famous Hunter Biden story. This . . . is also probably unconstitutional.") As the Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed, the First Amendment is only violated when request from the government to remove speech is coupled with a coercive threat. The Court most recently addressed this issue last term in NRA v. Vullo, in which it discussed the distinction between "permissible attempts to persuade and impermissible attempts to coerce." The test used to distinguish persuasion (or mere begging) from coercive action, reaffirmed in Vullo, is as follows: "a plaintiff must plausibly allege conduct that, viewed in context, could be reasonably understood to convey a threat of adverse government action in order to punish or suppress the plaintiff ’s speech."
I don't take issue with your thesis that free speech vibes are good. The problem is that Zuckerberg and his ilk aren't actually victims of federal government efforts to suppress viewpoints (see also, e.g., Murthy v. Missouri from last year regarding government requests that FB and others remove COVID misinformation). Facebook, X, etc. spread protected and unprotected speech alike ("true threats," for example, have no constitutional protection). The government has the power to regulate the latter under the First Amendment and, in at least some cases, it has a responsibility to take reasonable and lawful steps to mitigate harm caused by certain protected speech (like health or election misinformation). The First Amendment gives Zuckerberg and co the right to decline the government's requests to remove protected speech (including misinformation) from their platforms, but those platforms are not protected from the mere request.
I would agree with you IF Zuck were ridding his platforms of censorship. But, as of today, searching for hashtags of: #democrat, #fucktrump, #dnc, #voteblue & many other left tags, are blocked on insta. While the hashtags: #republican, #fuckjoebiden, #rnc, #votered & any other right tags, return all the results you could ever want.
Explain to me how his actions work to our benefit. Because I'm not seeing it.
Santi, you missed an opportunity to highlight the most important thing, which is always and everywhere Republican chicanery and hypocrisy. Even if there were something to the Hunter Biden story (which there was more than enough reason to doubt because 1) it was leaked to a worthless propaganda rag, the NY Post 2) by the notoriously dishonest Rudy Giuliani), the FBI did not ask Meta to censor it but only to watch out for Russian pro-Trump bot hits, which there had been in abundance in 2016. But even more important, when Republicans had an opportunity to punish an even more flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional act than anything Biden was accused of, namely Trump's attempt at extortion by threatening to withhold Congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine unless Zelensky announced an investigation into Hunter Biden, and every single Republican senator voted not guilty.
Never forget: however bad Meta or the FBI or the Democratic Party may be, the Republican Party is always much, much worse.
If all that the gov't had said was: "watch out for Russian bots," then I would agree with you.
According to the BBC story you cited:
"Zuckerberg told Rogan: "The background here is that the FBI came to us - some folks on our team - and was like 'hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that'."
He said the FBI did not warn Facebook about the Biden story in particular - only that Facebook thought it "fit that pattern".
Here is what the dedicatee of one of your books has written about the Hunter affair:
“What this means is that, in the crucial days leading up to the 2020 presidential election, most of the corporate media spread an absolute lie about The New York Post's reporting in order to mislead and manipulate the American electorate. It means that Big Tech monopolies, along with Twitter, censored this story based on a lie from “the intelligence community.” It means that Facebook's promise from its DNC operative that it would suppress discussion of the reporting in order to conduct a "fact-check” of these documents was a fraud because if an honest one had been conducted, it would have proven that Facebook’s censorship decree was based on a lie. It means that millions of Americans were denied the ability to hear about reporting on the candidate leading all polls to become the next president, and instead were subjected to a barrage of lies about the provenance (Russia did it) and authenticity (disinformation!) of these documents.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/greenwald/p/the-nyt-now-admits-the-biden-laptop?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
My admiration for Greenwald has diminished somewhat in recent years, as the volume of his voice has increased and the level of detail and acuteness of reasoning in his writing has decreased, as illustrated in this piece.
(1) His opening sentence announces that the Post published articles "about the business dealings of Democratic front-runner Joe Biden" in various countries. Neither of the two Post articles he cites says anything about Joe Biden's foreign business dealings.
(2) He refers to "suppression of the story by US corporate media." Of course one thinks immediately of the NY Times, WashPost, WSJ, LATimes. Did they all suppress or misreport the story? If so, why doesn't Greenwald say so and supply citations? His only reference to any of them is to mention that the Times ran a story -- before the election -- noting that the "Russian disinformation" charge had not been proved.
(3) Your post said the FBI had pressured Meta to censor mentions of the Hunter Biden laptop story. If this had been true, I can't imagine Greenwald wouldn't have mentioned it.
(4) It is perfectly obvious that the media were wary of this story in large part because 1) the Republican Party, always dishonest, had spread a very damaging lie about the leading Democratic presidential contender in 2004; 2) a last-minute pseudo-revelation about the Democratic presidential candidate had gravely damaged her election chances in 2016; 3) the Russian intelligence services very definitely did interfere on Facebook on Trump's behalf and contact Trump's campaign, which did not report their approach to the FBI, as they were required to, but met several times with them, even though nothing substantial was planned; and 4) as president (and before), Trump's m.o. was chronic, compulsive dishonesty, exemplified unsurpassably by Rudy Giuliani. Rightly or wrongly, the media were determined not to be suckered again. The old, fair-minded Greenwald would have duly mentioned this context.
(5) Suppose every charge made by Greenwald and the Post above were true. How does it compare to Trump's innumerable financial offenses: cheating on his taxes, stiffing his workers, racial discriminating in his rental properties, directing the Secret Service to stay at his hotels at inflated prices, offering to sell energy policy to the energy industry for a $1 billion campaign contribution; using campaign donations for legal expenses; floating a bitcoin on his first day in office; and using improper political influence in making virtually deal in his long, sordid real-estate career? It doesn't compare at all, of course.
I wish Greenwald (and some WOC contributors) would have a sense of proportion. When it comes to malfeasance, going after Democrats rather than Republicans is like a small-town police department devoting all its resources to making sure no one in town is driving with a broken tail-light while a gaggle of serial murderers is on the loose.
Ok so you’re fine with everything that took place?
Of course not. Broken tail lights are a serious matter.
For me, and for what you bring up here, it's more important that we tie the issue of free speech to Facebook's role in law enforcement. If we are saying that people can say/do anything they want on Facebook now, is Facebook going to report into law enforcement if, say, women are talking about their own experiences with birth control, miscarriages, and abortions? It's disingenuous to only talk about the "I can say whatever I want" without also addressing the consequences of saying whatever you want in an increasingly hostile and militant state that intends to criminalize what used to be legal actions. If Facebook stopped providing user data to law enforcement, I would agree with your argument, but there are a lot of sides to "free speech" besides "content moderation."
Zuck's been mocked because some people can actually distinguish between true freedom of speech from the one they are trying to sell us..
The "new" version of Zuck is an example of a huge pivot from someone who ran out of options.
When it becomes difficult to defend the free speech rights of people one detests, I find this helps: bash them mercilessly while defending their right to speak. For example:
"These complete assholes deserve the right to speak as much as the rest of us." Or:
"Don't make these cockroaches martyrs by censoring them."
The misconception here of course is that anonymous speech is free speech. Social media's critical flaw is not that it allows anyone to say anything, it's that' everyone can hide their identity while saying anything.
I agree with you Santiago. I'm a free speech absolutist. I'll go one farther and admit that anonymity can be a tool of resistance. But even Thomas Paine wouldn't need to write anonymously if his country (Britain) had respected speech as a right.
To put it another way: "say what you want and always own your words". The people wonder why society is fraying when the self-correction of being appraised for your words by society was ripped out of it by Meta and the like (overnight).
Glad to see this article. The Hunter Laptop showed the letter from Burisma stating that Hunter needed to earn his pay and have the investigation against them stopped. Not long after Biden threatens to not sent money to Ukraine if this prosecutor is not fired. That was not Russian disinformation but corruption in the Biden family. Look it up.
This would be believable about freedom of speech if the platforms did not already censor posts at the request of or in fear of different countries governments,, not just the U.S.. I believe there were reports that India's Modi, Turkey's Erdogan and MBS were able to get posts curtailed. What is being advanced is the freedom to lie freely without being checked on a platform.
Then why is it suddenly impossible to post a story about Luigi on TikTok? It wasn't before you don't have to censor things you don't allow to be posted.
I hadn't heard about that. Has anyone reported about it?
Not in the American press. I'm hearing it via foreign friends. In this case, it was the Canadians who alerted me, but it has been confirmed by others.