RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – When Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and almost all other reasonable social media threw the ‘off’ switches closing Donald Trump’s access to his favorite megaphone platforms and his more than 80 million Twitter followers, this gringo cheered.
Wrestling these toxic and dangerous toys out of his White House and his post-White House playpen could only be a major contribution to our sanity, something in short supply recently. It felt as if the boom box on what’s been labeled the nation’s public square, had finally become blessedly disabled.
But in the ensuing silence I couldn’t get rid of a nagging question: could the cure possibly be worse than the disease? Had a pandora’s box of highly contentious issues been flung open? Without the oxygen of media exposure – today’s breath of life for facts and fake news – might there be a lot less anxiety and tension in the world?
Stepping back from all the sound and fury (and there has certainly been a heap of both), it might be worthwhile to dive a little deeper, to drill down on both the question of the wisdom of shutting down access to the social media platforms and the economic facts driving media companies to position themselves on the right or left.
‘Deep Throat’, the shadowy source of information for reporters Woodward and Bernstein in their Nixon Watergate exposé kept advising them to “follow the money”. If we follow the money and its influence on ‘deplatforming’ content deemed ‘unacceptable’ to platform proprietors, it is impossible to divorce the predominantly commercial considerations from the more amorphous ones.
As the hardly objective English language Russian propaganda newsletter RT, bleated: “With unilateral censorship of a sitting US president, Big Tech has proven it’s more powerful than any government.” Putin’s enablers should certainly know. But they are not the only ones shedding crocodile tears.
No less a luminary than News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch whose Fox News Network, Wall Street Journal and media empire are in no way censored or constricted in widely broadcasting his partisan conservative views, is warning about a “wave of censorship that seeks to silence conversation”. Why does this strike a rather discordant note?
We have to ask, where true power really lies in what we like to think is an open democracy. That a couple of unelected, hi-tech billionaires demonstrated that they could, on their own authority, virtually silence anyone they chose, even the US President, raises serious freedom of speech concerns.
The commercial desire of certain Murdoch-like media owners to build the largest audiences possible by promoting conflict, scandal, and division is nothing new. Audience size equates to revenue size. It is as simple as that. No one would argue that violence and scandal sell better than the calmer stuff. I would wager that one of the reasons these last four years have been so tumultuous is that it has been super, good business for the media companies.
As Farhad Manjoo wrote in the ‘NY Times’, “The internet is still ruled by viral algorithms and advertising metrics that prize outrage over truth. Vast swaths of the media, including the most popular corners of radio and cable news, are still devoted to unhinged propaganda.”
Evidence abounds that social media platforms were critical for the ‘bad actors’ who invaded the US Capitol building. They were propagandized and used to plan and co-ordinate the attack which was generously fed by on-line content. Had the attackers not been able to rely on these platforms, there might have been no attack. It can be argued that a little less exercise of ‘free speech’ might have served the national interest.
“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” states the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the US Supreme Court has been consistent in protecting ‘free speech’, even if that speech can often be offensive. However, falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic, famously opined Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., is not, nor should it be, protected by the First Amendment.
It is often a difficult call to decide what is and what is not permissible. So, to protect platforms from liability for content carried, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) makes platform users “solely responsible for their own behavior”, freeing proprietors from virtually all potential lawsuits for what they carry. That’s great for the principle of ‘free speech’ but raises the thorny question of whether turning off the oxygen of anyone’s social media access flies in the face of that principle, even if the platforms have their own rules, however capricious they can be at enforcing them.
In Tom Stoppard’s play ‘Jumpers’, one of the characters wryly exclaims, “Without rules, Wimbledon fortnight would be a shambles.” If Wimbledon would be: what about everything else?
Certainly, the platforms that shut down Trump decided that his endless lies about voter fraud, coupled with his calls to followers to overthrow the election results, constituted a violation of their existing rules. In principle, these commercial enterprises did nothing wrong.
But perhaps that’s a bit too simplistic? We know that principle and practice are not always in sync. So; should a red line be drawn limiting ‘free speech’ and if so, who should draw it? Who or what is to decide what speech should be ‘free’?
To be honest, I share the concern of many that today, only a few very rich and powerful people have their hand on the ‘off’ switches, however carefully they may decide whether or not to use them. At the same time, I am anxious that the introduction of any government regulation might diminish the freedom guaranteed under the First Amendment.
A journalist, wandering around in Washington to cover the expected election day demonstrations that fortunately never materialized, reported seeing this sign propped against a tree: “BIG TECH CENSORSHIP KILLED DEMOCRACY.” Paraphrasing Mark Twain on reading his premature obituary, the news of Democracy’s death has been greatly exaggerated.
Certainly, things must change, and they are changing. Facebook has established an Oversight Board that the company claims, “is the first body of its kind in the world: an expert-led independent organization with the power to impose binding decisions on a private social media company.” The company admits, “It would be better if these decisions were made according to frameworks agreed by democratically accountable lawmakers”. Since no such framework exists, this has got to be better than nothing.
Better than nothing, yes, but only the beginning of the resolution of this exceedingly difficult conundrum. We all wish to protect free speech while keeping someone from endangering us with toxic lies and outrageous provocations. We are yet to figure out how to do it.