There is a line of thought developing that holds that if social media companies restrict content that the government wants restricted, there is fascist collusion going on. Consequently, private social media companies should be subject to civil or criminal sanctions for anti-First Amendment violations.
As Lori Roman and Naomi Wolf write in Left and Right Should Unite to Stop Censorship for The Epoch Times
We, a former advisor to President Bill Clinton’s campaign and a former member of the George W. Bush Administration, may not agree on many public policy issues. Figuratively speaking, we wear different colored hats. But we have joined together to sound the alarm against censorship.
Viewpoint censorship threatens to destroy the country as it was intended to be—a beacon of freedom of speech, religion, and assembly. The First Amendment protects citizens from the government controlling speech, and the principle of free speech permeates our founding principles.
Just last week, the White House press secretary bragged that the Biden Administration is working with social media companies to flag speech they find unacceptable. They label it “misinformation” while a better description would be “inconvenient information.”
Corporations may think they are free to censor speech because the First Amendment was written to constrain government, but when they conspire and collude with the government to censor, they have crossed the line and left themselves open to litigation that could destroy their companies.
But this is very dangerous thinking. It assumes that Facebook et al are on equal footing with the government. That is entirely false. The government has a legal monopoly on the use of physical force -- the power of the gun. Facebook has no such power. It only has the market power of voluntarism -- the power of the dollar.
To equivocate Facebook with the Biden Administration is a grave injustice. The New York Times reports how Joe Biden “has assembled the most aggressive antitrust team in decades,
stacking his administration with three legal crusaders as it prepares to take on corporate consolidation and market power with efforts that could include blocking mergers and breaking up big companies.
Antitrust not only empowers the government to block mergers and dismantle private companies, but also to levy ruiness fines and even jail executives. What chance does Facebook have against that kind of power? Yes, it can fight in court. But there is no realistic defense against undefined accusations, like “intent to monopolize.” Ultimately, government wins because it has, through antitrust, arbitrary, undefined, unlimited powers -- not to mention unlimited resources.
Let’s take a look at a recent example of how this mismatch between private companies and the government. President Biden has pressured social media to take down so-called “misinformation” about the COVID-19 vaccines. As Jacob Sullum writes in Joe Biden Is Trying to Impose Online Censorship by Proxy for Reason, “The administration’s public pressure campaign against COVID-19 ‘misinformation’ cannot be reconciled with its avowed respect for freedom of expression.”
President Joe Biden wants to suppress speech that discourages Americans from being vaccinated against COVID-19. Because the First Amendment does not allow him to do that, he is asking Facebook and other social media companies to do it for him.
Or at least that's the way White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who calls the Biden administration's demands for speech restrictions "our asks," describes the situation. But given the federal government's power to make life difficult for Facebook et al., the line between a request and a command is hazy, and so is the line between private content moderation and government censorship.
Psaki's assurances are hard to take seriously given the public pressure that the Biden administration is applying, its ability to launch litigation and support legislation that hurts social media companies, and its threat of "legal and regulatory measures." If those companies do what the president wants by cracking down on speech he does not like, they will be acting as the government's agents.
Emphasis is mine. Of course, a private company has a right to its political opinion. If it wants to help the Biden Administration advance a particular viewpoint about vaccines, it has as much right to take a political position as you or I have. It has as much right to ban what it considers “misinformation” on its platform as a lecture hall owner has to ban it in their venues or, for that matter, you or I have to ban it in our homes (although that would violate their stated purpose of fostering free expression and likely be commercially harmful over time).
But that’s not what’s going on with the alleged “collusion” charges levied by the likes of Lori Roman and Naomi Wolf. These private companies literally have a governmental gun to their heads. New Jersey Representative Tom Malinowski captured the essence of this fact when, in support of his proposed Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act, which is intended to force companies to reign in “extreme left-wing”--and right-wing--“ideas,” he warned, “And if they don’t do it voluntarily, we’re going to have to regulate them to death.” If a sitting congressman can get away with such overt public threats, we can only imagine what's going on behind the scenes.
I've been warning about censorship-by-proxy for a long time. The politicians can't directly censor, because of the First Amendment. But they have a powerful backdoor weapon, the regulatory state. Politicians can "arm twist" companies into submission by threatening regulation, in particular antitrust enforcement. The antitrust "laws" are particularly powerful. They're not really laws. They are unAmerican statutes that grant government arbitrary power, the tool of authoritarianism. Antitrust gives politicians power to prosecute any business for anything, at any time, at will. And it's a powerful tool for politicians to pressure private entities to do its bidding. Antitrust is Al Capone "politics," not law. Given that politicians of both parties are already threatening social media companies with antitrust, how much choice do they have to resist the political demand to censor their users? After all, the only power companies have is voluntary market, or economic, power. The government has the coercive power of law. Facebook’s dollar is no match for the government’s bullet.
This demonstrates the integral nature of rights, in which intellectual freedom depends on economic freedom, and vice-versa—and both depend on political freedom. It also shows how individual rights depend on grasping the crucial distinction between economic and political power, or what philosopher Harry Binswanger symbolizes as The Dollar and the Gun. This case shows how economic controls are used to crush other freedoms, like free speech. Intellectual freedom is not possible without economic freedom. Roman and Wolf call this “collusion” “indicative of America’s freefall into fascism.” Yes, it is fascism. But don't blame the social media companies. They are victims of the government’s fascist attack. Blame the government, which holds the power of the gun—a power that neither Facebook nor Twitter nor any private company possesses. The Italian government of Benito Mussolini, the original fascist, explains in “the ninth declaration of the Charter of Labor,
The intervention of the state in economic production takes place only when private initiative is lacking or is insufficient or when political interests of the state are involved. Such intervention may assume the form of control, assistance, or direct management.
Fascism can only be initiated by the state. Private entities, in and of themselves, by definition cannot initiate fascism under a proper, individual rights-securing constitution. We need to understand this distinction. Our freedom depends on it.
Related Reading:
Malinowski's Censorship-By-Proxy 'Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act' Advances
No, AOC, It's Not the Government's Job to 'Rein in Our Media': The First Amendment doesn't come with an exception for "disinformation," by Robby Soave for Reason
Americans Abandoning Free Speech Better Brace for the Consequences by J.D. Tuccille for Reason: Government will happily suppress misinformation in favor of misinformation of its own.
The Abolition of Antitrust by Gary Hull
The Dollar and the Gun by Harry Binswanger
Antitrust Prosecution of Apple is Rotten
My published letter-to-the-editor: Google not a Monopoly
The Banning of Alex Jones: Facebook Choice or Regulatory Extortion?
Fauci Can’t Get His Own Facts Straight, Yet the Government Wants to Decide What’s ‘Misinformation’ on Social Media by Hannah Cox for FEE
Biden’s Antitrust Team Signals a Big Swing at Corporate Titans By Jim Tankersley and Cecilia Kang for the New York Times: The president has stacked his administration with crusaders who have spent their careers challenging corporate consolidation.
