Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
The algorithm is not free speech. It puts people in contact with misinformation and anger-inducing content. Inciting people to violence is not protected free speech. In England, people were attacked and property was destroyed because people were incensed by what turned out to be false information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbcxKiaBNPU
“The Biden administration did pressure Meta, as well as its competitors, to crack down on Covid-19 misinformation throughout the pandemic. In 2021, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called it “an urgent threat,” and Biden himself said that misinformation was “killing people,” a statement he later walked back. This pressure was also at the center of a recent Supreme Court case, in which justices ruled in favor of the Biden administration.
We also knew that Meta, then known simply as Facebook, pushed back at efforts to stop the spread of misinformation on its platforms. Not long after Biden’s “killing people” remark, leaked company documents revealed that Facebook knew that vaccine misinformation on its platforms was undermining its own goal of protecting the vaccine rollout and was causing harm. It even studied the broader problem and produced several internal reports on the spread of misinformation, but despite pressure from Congress, Facebook failed to share that research with lawmakers at the time.
We actually learned about the specific kind of pressure the White House put on Facebook a year ago, thanks to documents the company turned over to, you guessed it, Jim Jordan and the House Judiciary Committee.
The Biden administration issued a statement after Zuckerberg’s latest letter became public. It said, in part, “Our position has been clear and consistent: We believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present.”
But the Zuckerberg letter didn’t stop with details of the well-known crackdown on Covid misinformation. It also reminds the public of the time, ahead of the 2020 election, the FBI warned social media companies that a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop could be part of a Russian disinformation campaign. Without mentioning any direct pressure from the government, Zuckerberg says in the letter that his company demoted the laptop story while it conducted a fact-check. He told podcaster Joe Rogan something similar in a 2022 interview, when he mentioned that an FBI disinformation warning contributed to the decision to suppress the story. Twitter also suppressed the laptop story, and its executives denied that there was pressure from Democrats or law enforcement to do so.
Zuckerberg also addresses some donations he made to voting access efforts in the 2020 election through his family’s philanthropic foundation. “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role,” the billionaire said. “So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.” The House Judiciary Committee responded in a tweet, “Mark Zuckerberg also tells the Judiciary Committee that he won’t spend money this election cycle. That’s right, no more Zuck-bucks.” Neither party mentioned that Zuckerberg also declined to make a contribution in the 2022 cycle for the same reasons.
The right is taking a victory lap over this Zuckerberg letter. Others are simply wondering why on earth, on an otherwise quiet week in August, did Zuckerberg even bother to remind us of all of these familiar facts?
https://www.vox.com/technology/369136/zuckerberg-letter-facebook-censorship-biden
Is Elon Musk a massive hypocrite when it comes to Twitter censorship?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsSxJSlopW4
“Publicly, President Joe Biden accused the platforms of “killing people” by failing to suppress speech that discouraged vaccination against COVID-19. Murthy likewise said that failure was “costing people their lives.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declared that social media companies “have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19, vaccinations, and elections.” If they failed to meet that responsibility, Murthy said, “legal and regulatory measures” might be necessary. Psaki floated the possibility of new privacy regulations and threatened social media companies with “a robust anti-trust program.” White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield said the platforms “should be held accountable,” which she suggested could include reducing their legal protection against civil claims based on users’ posts.
Privately, administration officials pressed Facebook et al. to delete or downgrade specific posts and banish specific speakers, to take action against content even when it did not violate the platforms’ rules, and to expand those rules so that any speech federal officials viewed as dangerous to public health could be deemed a violation. Their “requests” were sometimes phrased as demands.”
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“Flaherty emphasized that he was acting on the president’s behalf, that his concerns were “shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the [White House].” White House officials invoked previous perceived failures at content moderation, which they said had been disastrous. “When Facebook did not take a prominent pundit’s ‘popular post[]’ down,” the 5th Circuit notes, senior White House COVID-19 adviser Andrew Slavitt “asked ‘what good is’ the reporting system, and signed off with ‘last time we did this dance, it ended in an insurrection.'” In another exchange, Flaherty “demand[ed] ‘assurances’ that [Facebook] was taking action” and “likened the platform’s alleged inaction to the 2020 election, which it ‘helped increase skepticism in,'” adding that “an insurrection…was plotted, in large part, on your platform.'”
When social media companies failed to do what the administration wanted, White House officials reacted angrily. Flaherty noted that a flagged Facebook post was “still up,” asking, “How does something like that happen?” Facebook was “hiding the ball,” Flaherty complained. “Are you guys fucking serious?” he said in another email to Facebook. “I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.” Because Facebook was “not trying to solve the problem,” Slavitt said, the White House was “considering our options on what to do about it.””
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“By and large, especially after Biden and Murthy accused social media companies of killing people, the platforms did what the White House wanted. They were eager to appease the president, repeatedly asking how they could work together to address his concerns. In this context, the 5th Circuit says, it is likely that the pressure campaign amounted to “coercion” and that the White House unconstitutionally shaped moderation decisions.”
https://reason.com/2023/09/11/the-5th-circuit-agrees-that-federal-officials-unconstitutionally-coerced-or-encouraged-online-censorship/
“President Joe Biden’s White House pushed Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to censor contrarian COVID-19 content, including speculation about the virus having escaped from a lab, vaccine skepticism, and even jokes.
“Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing—rather than demoting/labeling—claims that Covid is man made,” asked Nick Clegg, president for global affairs at the company, in a July 2021 email to his coworkers.
A content moderator replied, “We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more. We shouldn’t have done it.””
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“”According to a trove of confidential documents obtained by Reason, health advisers at the CDC had significant input on pandemic-era social media policies at Facebook as well. They were consulted frequently, at times daily. They were actively involved in the affairs of content moderators, providing constant and ever-evolving guidance. They requested frequent updates about which topics were trending on the platforms, and they recommended what kinds of content should be deemed false or misleading. “Here are two issues we are seeing a great deal of misinfo on that we wanted to flag for you all,” reads one note from a CDC official. Another email with sample Facebook posts attached begins: “BOLO for a small but growing area of misinfo.”
” These Facebook Files show that the platform responded with incredible deference. Facebook routinely asked the government to vet specific claims, including whether the virus was “man-made” rather than zoonotic in origin. (The CDC responded that a man-made origin was “technically possible” but “extremely unlikely.”) In other emails, Facebook asked: “For each of the following claims, which we’ve recently identified on the platform, can you please tell us if: the claim is false; and, if believed, could this claim contribute to vaccine refusals?””
“These proposed rule changes aren’t just about making sure teachers discuss sexual orientation and gender identity only when it is appropriate. Evidence suggests that Florida officials are attempting to censor LGBT discussions in classrooms as much as they possibly can. The “Don’t Say Gay” label is becoming more and more apt as time goes by.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/16/5th-circuit-upholds-texas-law-forbidding-social-media-censorship-again-00057316