Facebook Backtracks on Free Speech Policy; Political Extortion?

Just recently, I lauded Facebook for resisting “escalating pressure ahead of the 2020 presidential election” by raffirming “its freewheeling policy on political ads [and] saying it won’t ban them, won’t fact-check them and won’t limit how they can be targeted to specific groups of people. “[P]eople,” said Facebook, “should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.” (See my post Facebook Stands Up to the Would-be Censors.)

It didn’t take long for Facebook to backtrack on its principles. But how much can we blame them?

In a NJ SPOTLIGHT article, Why Ocean County Facebook Page Was Shut Down: Charges of Anti-Semitism and Murphy Complaint Colleen O’dea reported:

Facebook has taken down the controversial page of an Ocean County group that has been accused of posting racist and anti-Semitic content, 10 months after the New Jersey attorney general’s office first called out the site for hate speech.

In a post on its website, Rise Up Ocean County (RUOC) decried the removal by the social media platform of its Facebook page Wednesday morning as “arbitrary and capricious” and asserted, as the group’s anonymous leaders have in the past, that there was “no hint of anti-Semitism” in posts to the page by its administrators. The group contends it opposes overdevelopment and growth in Lakewood and surrounding Ocean County communities and not the group it says is largely responsible for that — the Orthodox Jewish community.

State Attorney General Gurbir Grewal disputes that contention. Last spring, his office first asked Facebook to monitor RUOC’s page as it announced renewed efforts to combat a rise in reported hate crimes and new guidelines that expanded the definition of bias incidents. These continue to climb in the state, with preliminary data released by Grewal last month showing a one-year jump of 65% in reported bias incidents, for a total of 944 in 2019.

On Jan. 3, after RUOC’s Facebook page was down briefly but then republished, a joint statement from Grewal and Gov. Phil Murphy contended that the group had “an explicit goal of preventing Orthodox Jews from moving to Ocean County” and indicated that the state had followed up with Facebook that week, expressing  continuing “concerns” over the page.

Shortly after Facebook removed the page Wednesday, Grewal and Murphy contended in a joint statement that RUOC’s page had been violating the social media platform’s terms of service for months.

“We appreciate that Facebook has now decided that this kind of hateful rhetoric has no place on its platform,” the statement read. “There remains much that should be done to stop the spread of hate on the Internet. The Murphy Administration will continue to call out hate whenever and wherever we see it, we will persist in demanding meaningful reforms to address the proliferation of hate online, and we will continue working to make New Jersey a safe and inclusive place for all of our residents.”

Who the hell are Grewel and Murphy to determine what “hate” is? The Murphy administration has effectively declared, “Unpopular opinions are not welcome in New Jersey.” Does that really make New Jersey more “inclusive?” Does it really make NJ “safer?” Not safer from powerful politicians whom you offend.

I posted these comments:

As a private company, Facebook has a right to manage its content, although I think it made a big mistake. My concern is that they were politically and prosecutorially pressured to do so. State officials with the power of a governor and attorney general trying to shut down private speech for so undefinable a rational as to “stop the spread of hate” smacks of government censorship-by-proxy. Every individual has the fundamental right to express themselves, no matter how offensive or unpopular or “hateful” their speech. When government officials start shutting private citizens up because of ideas they deem unacceptable, they have adopted the tactic of dictators.

As the ACLU’s Nadine Strossen persuasively argues in her book HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship, free speech is an inalienable right. Punishing and silencing speech “solely because its message is disfavored, disturbing, or vaguely feared to possibly contribute to some future harm . . . is at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive.” I would add immoral. “The best way to resist hate and promote equality is not censorship,” Nadine convincingly argues, “but rather, vigorous ‘counterspeech’ and activism.”

I strongly concur, as do many thinkers from across the political spectrum. When government officials silence RUOC, directly or indirectly, they violate their free speech rights but also deny opponents the opportunity to challenge, rebut, and refute through their own counterspeech and activism. However “hateful” RUOC is deemed, it is not the threat we should be concerned with. I consider the pressure tactics of Grewal and Murphy to be an abuse of their power and back-door censorship. They, not RUOC and its ilk, are the real threat to civility, freedom, and inclusiveness.

I wish Facebook had roundly resisted the pressure in no uncertain terms. I don’t excuse them for caving in. Then again, with a state governor and attorney general breathing down their necks, maybe its not so easy.

Related Reading:

Facebook Stands Up to the Would-be Censors

HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship (Inalienable Rights)--Nadine Strossen

Facebook/Cambridge Analytica Data Breach Should Not Be a Pretext for Government Controls

Roger McNamee’s Attack on Intellectual Freedom

The Banning of Alex Jones: Facebook Choice or Regulatory Extortion?

Budding Grassroots Campaign Against ‘Hate Speech’ is shallow, childish . . . and Dangerous

The Danger of ‘Hate Speech’ Laws is Exposed

"Hate Crime” Laws are Gateways for Censorship and Statism--My article for The Objective Standard