Big Tech giveth and taketh away. And then giveth again. On a temporary basis. Until it takes it away again.
Former British politician Nick Clegg announced that Facebook will restore Trump’s account because “social media is rooted in the belief that open debate and the free flow of ideas are important values.”
Clegg, one in a series of cutouts for Facebook, credits a complicated process that includes its “semi-independent” oversight board. Except now that the Twitter Files gave us a peek behind the curtain, we know that Big Tech’s processes only apply to little people and that there are careful political and economic calculations at the higher levels to deal with more prominent accounts.
Facebook’s suspension was carefully calculated to benefit from the 2024 campaign season, not because it cares about the free flow of ideas, but because it wants the peak engagement and ad spending.
The only things that the ban demonstrated were that Facebook can do whatever it wants and that what it wants is to make as much money as possible while outsourcing regulation to international bodies.
One of the things most people forgot and few even knew is how Facebook made that decision.
The Rabat Plan of Action, which Facebook’s Oversight Board used to justify the censorship of President Trump, declares that states are obliged to restrict speech that “amounts to incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence” citing ICCPR articles 19 and 20. The UN’s ICCPR Article 19 allows restricting expression for “the reputations of others” and “public order”. Article 20 orders a ban on “propaganda for war” and the “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”
These are a few of the various UN regulations, treaties, and conventions cited by Facebook’s Oversight Board. And while all this may sound like meaningless UN gibberish to most Americans, these UN rules define what you can and can’t say on the internet.
And what that means is that participating in the marketplace of ideas and in political campaigns in the United States is now subject to United Nations regulations through Silicon Valley.
Which is to say that the rules governing speech in American elections will be UN rules.
That’s convenient for Facebook, a global company, which has to comply with the rules of more countries whose laws are governed by UN treaties and agreements anyway (more so than ours anyway), and because the UN helpfully specifies a lot of limitations on speech that our Constitution does not.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has kept urging our government to regulate the internet. He means it. In the absence of such regulation, we’re being regulated by the UN.
I don’t like the idea of USA ceding sovereignty to international organizations.
it’s the end of the Constitution and nationhood
it’s the end of America as a force for good in the world
You might very well be right.
If you believe, as I do, that good will not cease to exist or be finally overcome by evil, then where will good arise in the post-western world?
It’s a question that answers itself. It won’t probably except in some future time distant and remote from our dark age. Just like when the Roman empire collapsed.
Here the Christian is quite different to the Jewish view of history possibly. The Jewish view is much more inclined towards historical optimism perhaps, In the Christian view good does triumph once we get past Armageddon. Most people don’t. That is the extent of historical optimism available unless you dismiss the traditional interpretation.
Obviously none of these qualitative value judgements and distinctions between good and evil really make sense without religion. It’s really all just subjective preference.
If you take the secular humanist view then you assume that we all have something that we can somehow all relate to and you to try to build on that from some mystical basis.
That’s why you get the strong inclination towards global collectivism based on some herd instinct which is supposed to create some new transcendent edifice. Just like the Towers of Babel.
Obviously also it’s not that the Roman empire was especially good. There were disgusting in many respects but what they have in common with us is incredulity at the idea they could fail.
At least he won’t be advocating for clot shots on FB. Fauci lied, people died. Silver linings.
Some good points Una. I was thinking something similar about the secular humanist worldview but I have a headache and it’s too deep and difficult a topic for me to discuss at the moment.
Also I liked the point about the Romans not believing they could fail. How that delusional belief developed is one point, another is how that belief led them to catastrophic military disaster.
It’s because they defeated everything in their path but they couldn’t defeat themselves.
or maybe when they ran out of places to conquer they turned inward
We, the people can vote in more than one way.
Obviously the ballots don’t matter anymore after the massive fraud in 2020 and lack of consequences.
We can also vote every day by not supporting tyrannical businesses who don’t respect our rights and freedoms OR support the criminals and terrorists agenda.
i am more than happy to do that but it doesn’t seem to help much.
As bad as it is that Facebook is outsourcing its policies to the UN, even more odious is its application of those policies. If it believes that it is obliged to restrict speech that “amounts to incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence” how can it allow Biden’s “Independence Hall” speech on its platform? The entire speech was intended to generate hostility and even violence against opponents of his regime, calling them, inter alia, the enemies of democracy. But Facebook seemingly has no problem with allowing that on its platform.
Its time to move the whole rotten UN to Moscow without America to push around its time those nations leaders took care of their own people instead of tell us what to do all the time