Recently, a friend posted a lengthy piece on Facebook. I will obviously not mention his name for privacy purposes. Here is an excerpt that “triggered” me:
On the larger scale, my criticism of Facebook goes beyond the angry posts I have been receiving to the outsize influence it has on the lives and health of its users, as well on its influence on the way media, specifically news, is reported and distributed. Through its censorship policies, it has become a self-prescribed arbiter of what it considers false or inappropriate posts that those who might disagree would consider arbitrary and prejudicial. For these reasons, I’ve decided to “snooze” - temporarily stop posts - from my Facebook friends who have recently posted politically oriented content.
It’s interesting that my friend brought up a political issue--Facebook’s alleged “outsize influence it has on the lives and health of its users”--in a post “snoozing” political posts. He also misused, in my view, the word “censorship,” which is a term that implies legal coercion and thus only applies to government. Be that as it may, I left this comment:
You seem to be blaming Facebook for everything and anything harmful and objectionable that is posted by content publishers. But Facebook is only a platform. Blaming Facebook for all of the harm to lives and health and media and news is like blaming road builders for all the crimes committed by drivers. These kinds of accusations are a prelude to real censorship; that is, by the government. If you’re going to place blame, blame the actual publishers. I love Facebook. Facebook and other social media is the greatest tool for average people to freely express themselves since the printing press. But free speech also is the right not to associate with content or publishers you don’t like. Facebook’s “censorship policies” may be “arbitrary and prejudicial.” But it is their First Amendment right to be a “self-prescribed arbiter” of what is published on its platform. It’s no different from you snoozing or blocking posts you don’t want to see.
My friend:
Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, recently Tweeted, “Of course, Twitter is a private company, but we have seen many examples in Russian and China of such private companies becoming the state’s best friends and the enablers when it comes to censorship.” [sic]
Me, slightly edited for clarity:
That’s my fear, too. But a company that is “the state’s best friend” is not a private company. It is the type of quasi-private company that exists under fascist states (which are what China and Russia are). We’re not there (yet). But we do have a mixed economy with too many government controls. My fear is that the media companies are being subjected to behind-the-scenes regulatory and antitrust pressure and extortion, making them the politicians’ censors by proxy. We need to keep a strict separation of business and state to avoid that, and to ensure a fully free and open market.
Michael - I suggest you read this article by Victor Davis Hanson, which may modify your thinking somewhat: https://dailycaller.com/.../victor-davis-hanson-assault.../
Of course, I read it: There is so much wrong in that article that I couldn’t cover it all in a Facebook comment. Here are some relevant excerpts from Hanson’s article, followed by my comment. After exposing multiple instances of Left-wing bias, Hanson wrote:
Thousands of scared social media users then retreated to the more conservative site Parler. But in near-unison, Google, Apple and Amazon removed Parler from their platforms.
Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri had his upcoming book — a call to clamp down on Big Tech monopolies — abruptly canceled by publisher Simon & Schuster. Hawley’s crime was apparently his quixotic persistence in questioning the authenticity of the 2020 election.
What are the new standards that now get a book or a social media account canceled?
After all, the Vicki Osterweil book “In Defense of Looting,” a justification for theft and property destruction, came out last summer amidst the antifa and Black Lives Matter unrest. The author was even featured on National Public Radio in a largely sympathetic interview.
So, why did Big Tech, the media, the publishing industry, a host of corporations and a growing number of campuses double down on censoring some free speech? Why now blacklist, censor and cancel thousands of people?
After more examples of Left bias, Hanson got to this:
Over a century ago, the oil, railroad, telegraph and power industries created huge monopolies.
They set up vertically integrated cartels. And they used their enormous profits to lavish gifts on politicians, control information and destroy competition.
Some people likened these huge trusts to octopuses whose tentacles strangled freedom. In reaction, angry workers and farmers, muckraking journalists and novelists, and crusading populist and progressive politicians passed antitrust laws.
And so they broke up the monopolies.
So the values of the 19th-century rail and oil monopolies are back. But now they are married to the 20th-century leftist totalitarianism of George Orwell’s “1984.” And they are further powered by the 21st-century instant reach of the internet.
This time around there will be no progressive trustbusters or muckrakers. They are in league with, or bought off by, the new electronic octopus.
Of course, the antitrust laws were the brainchild of the supposedly pro-capitalist conservatives. The Progressives like President Theodore Roosevelt merely cashed in, then and since. Hanson also doesn’t distinguish between a genuine monopoly, which enjoys state protection from competition, and successful companies that operate in a largely free market. There are other contradictions in this article that I won’t address here.
I posted these comments:
The media is largely Left-biased? Has a double standard? Nothing new there. The intellectuals by and large have been hostile to Americanism for a long time. But as long as we maintain a free market in media, ideologically marginalized factions can build their own internet infrastructure. We’ve seen this before. In the 1990s, Rupert Murdoch created Fox News to counter the supposedly “monolithic” Left-bias of cable news. I will have no part in the anti-First Amendment hysteria now sweeping Left, Right, blue, red, and purple alike over a passing deplatforming fad.
By the way, Hansen is no friend of liberty. He mischaracterizes social media as a monolithic entity, rather than the industry of independent companies open to competition that it is. He denies the right of book publishers to decide for themselves what to publish. He peddles the myth of the 19th Century robber baron monopolies, which was only true of the railroads because of government intervention in that industry. And he supports the arbitrary antitrust statutes, one of the biggest threats to American liberty. He now wants to turn the antitrust tyranny against “big media” for exercising their rights, aligning himself with the anti-Capitalist Left he supposedly despises. This is a direct path to forcing media businesses to become “the state’s best friends and enablers.” Do we really want voluntary private bias to become state-imposed bias? You can’t defeat the totalitarianism of the Left with totalitarianism of the Right.
Thanks for the link.
Often, defending Capitalism means debating conservatives as well as Leftists. That was the case here.
Related Reading:
The Google "Monopoly" vs. True Monopolies
My published letter-to-the-editor: Scroll down to Google not a Monopoly
Corporate ‘Censorship’ and Fredrik DeBoer’s Evil ‘Solution’
Roger McNamee’s Attack on Intellectual Freedom
CATO's Alan Reynolds Calls Out Roger McNamee for His Anti-Facebook Tirade
Trump Joins Biden in War on the Average Person’s Newfound Power to be Heard
The Abolition of Antitrust by Gary Hull
SCHOLARS WITH THUMBSCREWS: ANTITRUST’S PREDATORY ACADEMICS—Tom Bowden
The Banning of Alex Jones: Facebook Choice or Regulatory Extortion?
Vindicating Capitalism: The Real History of the Standard Oil Company by Alex Epstein for The Objective Standard
The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America by Burton W. Folsom and Forrest McDonald
No comments:
Post a Comment