Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Facebook have upped the ante in their ongoing challenge to the limits of Section 230 of the Communication Act, part of the law which shields social media giants from lawsuits over posts which contain libellous content, yet allows them to remove “offensive” material, by upping their intrusion into the private and public communications of members.
The next front in Facebook’s misinformation battle: climate change
By Clare Duffy, CNN Business
Updated 1409 GMT (2209 HKT) November 7, 2021New York (CNN Business)In August 2019, when a Facebook employee typed “climate change” into the platform’s search bar, the auto-fill suggestions that popped up included “climate change debunked” and “climate change is a hoax.” The results prompted the employee to ask in a post on the company’s internal site: “Do our policies combatting the spread of misinformation on Facebook apply to climate denialism?”
…
The documents highlight how, for years, some employees of the social media company — which recently changed its name to Meta — have raised alarms about climate change misinformation spreading on its platforms, and called on the company to do more to crack down on it.
On Monday, the company’s VP of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, announced in a blog post additional steps Facebook is taking to address climate change, including expanding informational labels on some posts about climate change to more than a dozen countries.
…
Experts, however, say the stakes could not be higher for Facebook to further ramp up its solutions for this problem — and soon.
“Given that [climate change] is an existential threat, we can’t be casual about the seriousness about the threat of climate misinformation,” said John Cook, a research assistant professor at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. “It needs to be addressed with the same level of urgency and proactiveness that they’re showing with Covid-19 and election misinformation.”
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Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/07/tech/facebook-climate-change-misinformation/index.html
The problem with Section 230 appears to be the definition of “offensive” is too vague.
I think most people would agree social media companies should be allowed to remove say child pornography videos, or videos of perverts filming themselves gang raping adult victims, but Facebook and other activist social media companies appear to want to extend this definition of “offensive” to include discussing theories they don’t like about the origins of Covid, the effectiveness of vaccines, what happened during the last Presidential election, and now, discussion of the causes of climate change.
Are these topics really offensive in the sense that child pornography is offensive? Or are Facebook and other social media giants completely out of control, abusing a weak section 230 law to impose arbitrary censorship on users?
Society really needs to make a decision about what speech is permitted, and what speech social media giants are allowed to censor.
To many people, social media communications are like phone calls. Imagine if you were say discussing current affairs with a friend on the phone, and suddenly a robot voice intruded, explaining a comment you just made conflicted with a fact check?
How is that different to say Facebook intruding on a closed discussion with friends, taking down or downgrading the visibility of posts, or adding their intrusive and in my opinion frequently questionable fact checks? Is it reasonable to do this, even with a public discussion? Are we really a society where it is appropriate to have Facebook censors interrupting private and public conversations with a big megaphone, shouting “fact checks” into the public square?
There is no doubt the heavy handed censorship by Facebook and other social media giants has a chilling effect on legitimate conversation and discovery of new information.
Look at Facebook’s treatment of the Covid lab leak hypothesis. Facebook suppressed suggestions Covid leaked from a lab in Wuhan, until the suppression of this increasingly mainstream theory got embarrassing, then they shamelessly backflipped and lifted the ban.
Facebook: People Are Now Permitted to Speculate Covid-19 Leaked from a Laboratory
Suppression of free speech is dangerous. Chinese suppression of free speech, arresting and intimidating doctors who tried to warn the world, allowed the Wuhan outbreak to grow into a global pandemic.
In my opinion Facebook’s abuse of censorship has strayed dangerously close to the CCP’s level of high risk suppression, through their manipulation and suppression of legitimate discussion about the origins of Covid. How does Facebook’s suppression of the Covid lab leak theory qualitatively differ from CCP suppression of the original medical warnings from Wuhan?
Unless the ambiguity and weakness of US decency laws is addressed, organisations like Facebook will continue in their hubris to impose their views about what speech is permissible on society, for in my opinion frequently opaque reasons, without having to explain themselves, while still enjoying the protection of Section 230.
There is a reason the founding fathers enshrined freedom of speech in the US Constitution. They recognised the anti-democratic nature of denying people access to facts and viewpoints, in order to manipulate the opinions and actions of ordinary people. The Founding Fathers knew the danger to civic society, of concentrating the power to decide what opinions can be expressed, into the hands of one person or a small group of people.
Next time social media giants make a mistake, and interrupt free flow of information because one of their politically radical employees has a hissy fit, the consequences for society might be far worse than the consequences of interrupting a legitimate academic discussion about the true origin of a horrible virus.
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Just think when Trumps new platform comes online we can all jump ship.
I dare say he will get over 100 million to start with which means many will leave Facebook and Twitter…
The problem is best looked at from a financial angle. Take the 1934 Bank Act, known as Glass-Steagall, where FDR split off high risk investment from commercial activity – i.e. no bailout possible for the “animal spirits”, and took the US economy from absolute collapse in 10 years ready for WWII. Fast forward to 1999, Glass-Ateagall repealed, and a crash again by 2008, endless bailouts and money pumping.
So first regulate that financial problem. Then it will be obvious what to do with Meta. Problem with Google, Alphabet, is right now it is basically a DoD subcontractor – it won a Pentagon Big Data tender, with an internal strike going on over that. To break that up one confronts the Pentagon.
I only wonder what Meta is up to buying up every VR firm – will they offer Pentagon or CIA VR Drone operations? Or offer gamers ¨drone your favorite target, anywhere anytime¨? Pentagon for all?
Like most of your history, this too is absolute bollocks.
The US economy did not recover from FDR’s great depression until after the start of WWII.
It wasn’t the war spending that did it either. It was the elimination of the many FDR era regulations on the economy that allowed the recovery. Fortunately FDR died before the war ended, so he wasn’t able to re-instate those regulations.
Austrian Hayek stuff is simply superstition.
Funny how FDR gives them a fit.
It was Clinton and Nixon who torpedoed Betton-Woods and Glass-Steagall, and look at the current financial disaster – the entire FLOP26 is a gangrened attempt to rescue that with $150 trillion of your green.
Better do as FDR did when he cancelled the British gold-standard conference and signed off on Glass-Steagall.
There’s a Reclaim the Net press release/article about this. They a campaign group called “The Real Facebook Oversight Board” are coordinating this censorship campaign. They have a twitter account but no web site yet.
Faulty WUWT – published my comment as I was editing it!
There’s a Reclaim the Net press release/article about this. They say a campaign group called “The Real Facebook Oversight Board”, RFOB, are coordinating this censorship campaign. These people (RFOB) have a twitter account but no web site yet.
Funny how both the pro-censorship people make such a fuss about being “real”. Do they fear we suppose they’re “fake”?
I recommend you all edit your replies here in source code mode – until WUWT give us the edit button we’ve been asking for at least a decade. I had to close my connection to WUWT just to post this correction.
The edit button does work for about 15 minutes. Mouse-over the wheel…
This is an edit button (if you scan through the comments you’ll notice a “Last edited” comment at the bottom of several posts). You just have to click on the little gear icon at the bottom right of your post to find the edit option. I think there’s an time limit on how long after you make you post that you can edit.
ETA: see, this line here was added in on an edit!
If there were a “censorship campaign,” it would have to be being run by government officials, otherwise it could not really be censorship.
“If there were a “censorship campaign,” it would have to be being run by government officials”
Where do you get that idea from?
From the way censorship works in the real world (as opposed to political fantasies).
why anyone filths up their pc with fkbk and windoze beats me
Apple is worse than Windows by a long shot.
Our politicians gave Monopolies to these evil Clowns…which…being Leftists…they all love to abuse to destroy our Constitutional Freedoms… by Proxy.
These are the guys our Founders tried to protect us from. It’s our turn to Save It All…or not.
The entire world is represented at COP#26 and 100% of them blind to global warming cause. Now Facebook is going to address it and determine what people can post.
Zuckerberg is so far over his head, his entire team was technically overwhelmed by a plastic head called Specific Absorption Rate(SAR). The entire science supporting wireless communications(electromagnetic RADIATION) is a plastic head and used to bypass all jurisdictions.
The plastic head doesn’t have a brain wave, it is specific to heating(gently cooking babies, children in schools, teens, adults, seniors and blanketing planet earth)
The plastic head left out 100% of all bio-electrical information associated with anything, we are meat or tissue in a microwave.
The heart beat of mother earth that sustains all life is 7.83 Hz
The human heartbeat is 7.83 Hz.
Delta wave in brain when healing is .2 Hz
Wireless smart meter network antenna is 900,000,000 Hz
Wi-Fi antenna frequency in smart meter is 2.45,000,000,000
There is nothing electrically compatible with microwave EMFs at billions of electrical cycles per second.
Here is a picture of the test used to microwave the planet for ease of communication and what they left out which is blanketing of the planet for ease of communication. EMFs are an electrical jurisdiction first and the reason I cross examined “experts” technically overwhelmed by a plastic head.
http://thermoguy.com/cross-examination-of-fortis-bc-expert-panel-on-application-for-wireless-smart-meters/
Here is the SAR test on the end use device(only) The dangerous grid was left out and keep this is mind, there are real and practical reasons we wire the world. Does this test represent you, family or technical background? https://www.nutwooduk.co.uk/archive/tuv/sar_update.asp
AC is in fact refrigeration reacting to the symptoms of solar EMFs interacting with absorbent or unshaded areas. These are 2 time-lapsed IR videos from outside and inside a building. You will see the cold heavy air from AC laying on the floor.
https://youtu.be/EA3py3us5VM
None of this is at COP26 nor have microwaves been added as an extremely dangerous CAUSE of atmospheric warming and destruction of the entire planet. I was asked to co-present with Al Gore and could not based on perceived GHG emissions heating the planet from atmosphere down. Heated air doesn’t work like that. i.e. think about a hot air balloon.
Expand on the above, it isn’t for debate. Forest fires are still being fought blind and the eco damage and loss of ground cover has serious ramifications. Thermal gradients can be tracked giving lead time for first responders or forestry.
… just a smidgen off-topic.
Off topic:
In case anyone missed this…AOC and her Democrat Leftist comrades set aside most of the CLIMATE CHANGE planks in the “Not-Really-Infrastructure Bill” in favor of the Socialist planks in their Anti-American Globalist Socialist Agenda.
The really significant point that so many people are missing is that Facebook cannot censor anyone, and most certainly is not doing so. Only government can censor: it’s a government power, not anything any private parties can impose.
Only government can censor? Based on what?
censor (verb)
Is that not what they’re doing?
Based on the “police power” that only governments have, that is, the use or threat of official force. No private person, group or agency can silence a person or suppress a publication.
Facebook can delete stuff from its platform, but that is not censorship because it applies only to FB, not the country as a whole. What Facebook wishes is not legally binding on everybody else.
“Facebook can delete stuff from its platform, but that is not censorship because it applies only to FB”
I see that you completely ignored the definition provided. What facebook is doing is censorship by definition. You’re redefining things to suit your own purposes.
How can you pretend to “see” the opposite of what really happened?
The definition you provided included “suppress as objectionable,” and I pointed out that Facebook cannot do that.
Even if you concentrate on the “delete as objectionable” part, even though FB can delete stuff from its platform, that is hardly the sort of universal (or at least society-wide) deletion you were talking about.
Not by any reasonable definition taking into account the real world.
Nothing in that definition, nor in common usage historically (remember the “television censors” in the late 1900’s?), requires universal deletion or suppression. You are adding that to the definition to suit your own purposes.
Since you insist on using your own definitions for words, you make it impossible to engage in rational discourse.
Even when dealing definitions and/or “common usage,” it pays to be realistic. Why in the world should the fact that something does not appear on Facebook mean that it has been suppressed? The notion simply seems fantastic.
You seem to be improperly conflating “deleted on Facebook” with “suppressed in public discourse.” That is an incredible stretch, and does not make sense.
To be really useful (and quite rational), discourse should check into whether the definitions fit the facts. Not the other way around.
If you define “censorship” as “not liking an idea and therefore not promoting it,” then you have basically taken a very important word and emptied it of all rational meaning.
[I wanted to add this to my previous post, but the edit button does not seem to have much endurance.]
___
Antitrust must be destroyed.
By using rational definitions? You have a very odd attitude.
So the Arctic really is ice free and Al Gore is a leading scientist worthy of a Nobel Prize and … /sarc
Zuckerbeg (spell check keeps changing it to Sucker berg) hasn’t sold his soul, only because no one will pay more than pocket change for the novelty of watching it wither in real time.
They already do. It’s why I deleted my account and stopped using their services a year ago.
A company like Facebook produces little value added to a society. It has no product other than a internet platform where it scoops up personal information about users to resell to advertisers, and the users become the product.
It is easily argued that the toxic effects of social media on teens and adolescents far outweighs any benefits it brings to society. Facebook and its Instagram which Meta owns are prime examples of toxic social media for teenagers and those easily swayed.
So Facebook could just collapse into Chapter 7 liquidation, taking all $900 Billion in market cap with it, and the world would be better off for it.
I argue Meta should just collapse and disappear. We’d all be better for it.
Or are Facebook and other social media giants completely out of control,
Yes, they are. And nobody does anything to try to hold them accountable.
Imagine if you were say discussing current affairs with a friend on the phone, and suddenly a robot voice intruded, explaining a comment you just made conflicted with a fact check?
Not that farfetched – I’ve already seen proposals chillingly close to this. Apple monitoring the content of SMS messages, for example.
Facebook intruded on me this weekend – not with a fact check, but to present the Democratic Party’s take on an issue that conflicted with my post. Yes, it is exactly like a private conversation at, say, a restaurant only to have the eavesdropping owner come over and start arguing with you and then, if you insist, kick you out.
I suggest that Facebook come up with an option where we can “unfriend” them so we can avoid having them tell us what to say.
They have that option already, viz., don’t use FB.
You should not have to go to a restaurant you don’t like — and no restaurant should have to cater to you if the owner doesn’t want you there.
Carl Sagan, 1995, Demon-Haunted World:
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance
If we want to shut down Facebook because they edit/censor/delete content they deem to be “offensive” or “misleading” because they disagree with the opinions of those who run the company that enjoys legal protections because they aren’t “publishers”, the solution is simple.
Let me run it.
It won’t be long before I’m the only member.
Then I’ll find an old thing I’d said then that I disagree with now and ban myself.
Voila! No more Facebook!
Meta? Meta? Aha! Meta as in Metaluna! Maybe Zuckerberg has assembled an Interocitor and that’s where he got the name. Or maybe Zuck just has no imagination.
At some point, if they editorialize, they own the content. That’s going to cost them.
Under the circumstances, that is not a reasonable idea. The NYT, for instance, does have exact control over what it chooses to print. FB, on the other hand, is open to the public for unsolicited input (i.e., FB does not choose everything that shows up on its platform, unlike the NYT).
Seems to me that they are not following the intent of the Section 230 FCC rule. How can they change the words of another person’s “Opinion” in a way that would cause harm to that person and not be sued for that action?
For example, If I were to publish something that was absolutely true on this site, such as Pi equals 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 … and The “moderator, editor” changed it to 8.8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 … and I was the dean of the math department of a prestigious university and this caused me to lose my position. Seems to me that they should be held responsible for their actions. Even a non-mathematician can look it up on the internet, use their calculator, computer to verify the truth.
Anyway the 1A argument against the GAFA is extremely strong, despite what all the libs and the fake cons “1A is for the US gov” wants to believe.
Problem is, Trump’s lawyers managed to f ck up badly their lawsuits with fake quotes.
F cking unbelievable.
In reality, there is no valid “1A argument” that “GAFA”/”Big Tech” is doing anything to violate rights. They all have their businesses to run according to their own judgments as to what the market will bear. They do not owe it to anyone to host/platform ideas they don’t like.
If anything, the First Amendment protects Facebook’s right to deplatform anybody it pleases.