Friday, June 5, 2020

Critical Facebook Employees Should Welcome, Not Want to Censor, Facebook Users

Mark Zuckerberg came under sharp criticism from a group of his Facebook employees for refusing to follow Twitter’s policy of restricting President Trump’s comments on the criminal violence that has hijacked the protests over the police killing of George Floyd. Twitter claimed that Trump’s comments “glorify violence.”

Rachel Siegel and Elizabeth Dwoskin report for The Washington Post:

As protests swept the nation over the weekend, several Facebook employees and executives took the unusual step of chastising chief executive Mark Zuckerberg for his hands-off approach to President Trump’s post about the demonstrators — and did so on rival site Twitter.

Twitter made the unprecedented decision last week to flag the president’s tweet as inflammatory. That triggered a major internal debate on Facebook’s group messaging boards, as many called on Zuckerberg to follow in Twitter’s footsteps.

Trump wrote, “when the looting starts, shooting starts” after protests erupted last week in Minneapolis after George Floyd, a black man, died in police custody. Massive and often violent demonstrations have followed, spreading to cities across the country. On Friday, Zuckerberg defended the decision to take no action against the post, writing that “people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force.”

Facebook’s response to the president stands in stark contrast to Twitter, which for the first time limited the public’s ability to view or share a Trump tweet because it “violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence.”

My concern here is not to delve into the policies of these two private companies, and certainly not to question their right to set their own standards of use. My concern is the rationale of those demanding the restrictions on the use of these social media platforms.

“I don’t know what to do, but I know doing nothing is not acceptable,” said design manager Jason Stirman. “I’m a FB employee that completely disagrees with Mark’s decision to do nothing about Trump’s recent posts, which clearly incite violence. I’m not alone inside of FB. There isn’t a neutral position on racism."

“Inciting violence” and “racism” are two entirely different things. When speech turns into violence, it is no longer speech--an intellectual expression. It is rights-violating. But expressing racist sentiments is not rights-violating. Now, prohibitions on speech that Facebook deems racist does not silence the speaker. The speaker can still express his thoughts, just not on Facebook. But my concern gets more explicit with the next comment:

“Censoring information that might help people see the complete picture *is* wrong. But giving a platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable, regardless who you are or if it’s newsworthy,” wrote Andrew Crow of Facebook’s Portal product line.

Given the loose way the term “racism” is thrown around, who determines whether a comment is “racism”? Who determines what is “newsworthy”? Who determines what constitutes “disinformation”? Who frames “the complete picture”? Now, again, Facebook certainly has the right to make those determinations. Why they would, is beyond me. It can not be done objectively. Millions of their own customers would be caught up in their dragnet.

If Twitter or Facebook restricts their platforms in this way, unwise as that would be, it is not a threat to free speech. But the danger is that the same sentiment that drives people to pressure Facebook to privately censor their own platform users inevitably spills into politics, the realm of government force. They are the same dangerous arguments advanced to advocate for such things as “hate speech” laws--that is, government-imposed censorship. 

The flap between Mark Zuckerberg and his disgruntled employees is not just about Donald Trump or Facebook. It is much deeper, with broad ramifications for intellectual freedom in America. 

Related Reading:









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

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