Why laws should be strict for Social Media

World: The difference between the First Amendment and corporations such as Twitter, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook is the most critical challenge to free speech in our lifetime. Presenting a corporation with access to influence elections is just another place that sells goods that are old enough to pretend the role of debate in an independent society.

From the day the founders wrote 1A until very recently, no entity existed that could censor large scale technologies other than the government. It was difficult for a company, never mind a man, silence an idea or promote a false story in America, never mind the whole world. He was the stuff of Bond’s villain.

The advent of global technology controlled by mega-corporations such as Twitter brought the ability to control speech and the desire for the first instant. The rules are his rules. So we see a permanent presidential ban, for which nearly 70 million Americans voted from tweeting their 88 million followers (ironically, the courts previously claimed that for the president, It was unconstitutional to block those who wanted to chase it). Meanwhile, the same censors allowed the Iranian and Chinese governments (along with the president’s critics) to speak openly. For these companies, violence in one form is a threat to democracy, while violence in another form is under a different color flag.

The year 2020 also saw the arrival of a new strategy by the global media: sending a story to a memory hole to influence an election. The contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which strongly suggests illegal behavior on his part and unethical conduct by his father, were purposefully and effectively kept by the majority of voters. The voter no longer had to agree or disagree; It was to know and rate oneself or remain ignorant and vote only anyway.

Try an experiment—Google “Peter Van Buren” with quotation marks. Most of you may have seen on the first page of results articles written four years ago for outlets such as The Nation and Salon. In the last four years, none of you would have seen the scores of the columns written for the American Conservative. Google buried them.

The capacity of a handful of people has no one voted to control the mass of public discourse. It represents the stunning centralization of power. This is the power that defies the logic of “start your own web forum.” Someone did — and then Amazon withdrew its server support, and Apple and Google banned their app.

First Panel, TAC’s 7th Annual Foreign Policy Conference, What 2020 Means for Foreign Policy. The same happened with Daily Stormer, which was run offline through a coordinated effort by tech companies and 8Chan and was displaced by Cloudflare. Amazon’s partner GoDaddy removed AR15, the world’s largest gun forum. Tech giants have killed local newspapers by increasing advertising revenue. These companies are, in the words of @Jack, “not a small part of a large public conversation.”

The logic of tech companies was particularly evil in destroying the conservative social media forum Parler — either we start censoring like we do (“moderation“), or we shut you down. The parlor allows ideas and people to be banned by others that bring about its demise. Amazon et al. eroded its power to censor another company. Tech companies also claimed that while Section 230 states that we are not publishers, we only provide the platform; if Parler did not exercise editorial control to the more comprehensive technology’s satisfaction, it ended. Even if Parler comes back online, it will only survive in the pleasure of the powerful.

Since democracy was created, it needed a public forum from the Acropolis to the city square. This place still exists today, for better or worse, in the global media. This is the seriousness of the threat to free speech, making us “as if it is not a violation of free speech, a violation of the terms of service!” People once said that “I want to help you vote for women, but the constitution specifically refers to men.” The side of history on which some stand.

This new reality should be the starting point, not the endpoint of discussion about the First Amendment and the global media. Facebook et al. had evolved into something new that can reach beyond its corporate boundaries, beyond the idea of ​​a company that sells just soaps or grains, beyond the founder’s vision when they wrote 1A. Thomas Jefferson is hard to imagine what the president can say to millions of Americans when determining college dropouts. The magical game of words is a company, so it does not matter – it is no longer enough to save us from drowning.

Tech companies currently work in informal consultations with each other, becoming the first to ban some, so that others can follow. The next step is when one company’s decision replaces others immediately and then downsizes its contractors and suppliers as a requirement to continue the business. Airbnb’s decision to ban users on its political stance can cross platforms so a person cannot fly, use a credit card, etc., essentially turning it into a non-person who Unable to participate in society beyond a walk. And why isn’t the task fully automated to destroy people using a particular hashtag or people who like an abusive tweet? Perhaps create a youth organization called Twitter Jugend to watch 24/7 on the media and report dangerous views? A Nation of High School Hall Monitor.

When we help arrest the “right” people, consider engagement with surveillance technology. So we capitalize with the capital riots on how cell phone data was used to keep people on the site, against facial photos taken on social media combined with pictures. Throw in calls from the media for people, FBI for friends and neighbors, with amateurish efforts across Twitter and even “out” barking participants. The goal was to put people in jail if possible, but most of the faithful were equally satisfied if they could lose their jobs to someone. Tech provides this tool to users who accept it, knowing full well how they will be used. Orwellian? Orwell was an amateur.

There are legal arguments for extending 1A protection limited to social media. Section 230 could have been amended. However, given that Democrats are unprofitable by corporate and government censorship, no legislative solution is likely. Such people care more about some citizens’ rights (trans people now seem popular; it used to be incompetent people compared to the most basic right for all people).

They rely on the fact that defending all speech on principle today is professional suicide. It is easy in a divided America to claim a struggle against fascism (racism, misrule, white supremacy, whatever) that overthrows old norms. And they think they can control the animal.

But imagine that someone’s thoughts, which today may be from @Jack and Zuk’s mail, can change over time. Imagine that Zuk finds religion and uses all his resources to ban legal abortions. Consider a change of technology that allows Google to change, a different company run by someone thinking like MyPillow Guy, which you can read. As one former ACLU director explained, “Speech restrictions are like poison gas. They are a great weapon when you see your target. But then the wind blew. ”

The 2020 election, when he hid the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop from voters, and then, when he banned the president and other conservative voices, was the era to come, proof of concept for media veterans that they could They work behind the illusion of democracy.

The Supreme Court is hoping to expand First Amendment on social media, as it did when it extended 1A to include all government levels in hometown mayors. The Court has long accepted the flexibility of 1A, growing it disproportionately to nudity and advertising as functions of “speech.” But not much change is expected anytime soon. Like speeches on other civil rights, historical decisions are evolutionary and conform to social changes rather than revolutionary.

It is said that many of those who said the poem about Trump’s Muslim ban noted that “before they came …” are now supporting the censorship of conservative voices on social media. The funny thing is that both Trump and Twitter claim that what they did was for the people’s safety. One day we will all wake up and realize that it does not matter who is censoring, the government or the Amazon. It is all just sensors.

A sad little debate “But you have violated the Terms of Service!” It is going to be.