Texas billionaire John Arnold has long held a notorious position for many in the free speech community as the financier for efforts to establish massive censorship systems in the United States. While Elon Musk has been attacked for his effort to reduce such censorship at X (formerly Twitter), Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have long pushed censorship efforts, even funding a commercial campaign to get people to embrace what they call “content moderation.” Now Zuckerberg has put Arnold on the Meta Board of Directors in a blow to efforts to get the company to accept free speech values.
Arnold has given millions to organizations pushing censorship systems. The Washington Examiner has revealed how Arnold Ventures has given $13.7 million to five groups seeking to expand censorship programs in the name of combating disinformation.
Among the recipients was the Social Science Research Council, a nonprofit group that runs the Social Media and Democracy Initiative and the project Mediawell. It “curates” news for “digital disinformation and misinformation.” Its site runs studies and articles that advocate government and corporate censorship efforts. For example, one explainer listed government intervention as a solution to climate change denial or disinformation:
The CAAD coalition emphasizes the importance of systemic solutions to prevent the spread of mis-/disinformation. CAAD recommends that online platforms adopt concrete measures to address mis-/disinformation and encourages governments to require advertising technology, broadcast, publishing, and social media companies to adhere to those measures.
The concern is that Zuckerberg has never been a defender of free speech at Facebook and Arnold will only reinforce an inclination toward censorship. While X opened up its files to reveal the massive censorship system coordinated with the government, Facebook has resisted such efforts.
Facebook has long tried to get the public to embrace its role as some kind of speech overlord. Years ago, Facebook rolled out an Orwellian commercial campaign to get the public to embrace censorship. The commercials showed young people heralding how they grew up on the internet and how the world was changing, creating a need for censorship under the guise of “content moderation.” Facebook, they promised, was offering the “blending of the real world and the internet world.”
Is there anyone who uses Facebook as a trusted source of information ?
I use Facebook as a login service for other web sites and for facebook market place.
Nothing else.
I would not trust them as a news source
not as a means of communicating on any even slightly controversial topic.
I do not give a schiff how much censorship they engage in,
because I do not rely on FB in anything where censorship would matter.
Nor would I consider using FB for anything that I can perform another way.
John Say says: “Is there anyone who uses Facebook as a trusted source of information ?”
I have a small handful of essential contacts for which FB is the only efficient method of quick, but asynchronous, communication. FB Marketplace (which you mentioned) has also surpassed Craigslist as a regional, non-commercial, buy/sell venue for individuals (although both have some quite serious flaws). Those very limited purposes are the only use I make of FB, and if I had viable options, I’d abandon it in a moment. In general, I consider it useless, inherently intrusive (an aspect that increases on an almost daily basis). It is also, relative to Google’s services, incompetently designed and coded, and that is an evaluation resulting from long term observation by a retired systems professional. That limitation is what leaves me more bemused than personally concerned about the subject development.
John Say says: “I do not use google for searching and have not for a long time. ”
I use Google as a fall-back option, should other engines not yield what I am looking for. Different search engines have varying strengths and weaknesses. I do use DDG. I have recently begun to use stract.com. which (at least for now) maintains its code as true Open Source, and does not accept ads. For some searches it seems quite promising, although it is clearly not ready to be used exclusively as anyone’s sole search utility. I really miss the early days of internet search engines when the user could provide Boolean arguments in include/exclude/scope terms.
Anonymous said: “Congress should “take” Google Search for public use under its power of eminent domain per the 5th Amendment.”
Sure. The cure for implicit fascism is to make it explicit. Works for me
Thank you so much for your sagacious explication:
The 5th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America constitutes fascism.
good lord this is baby talk compared to what is really going on – see just a bit below
https://www.racket.news/p/listen-to-this-article-state-department
https://twitter.com/i/status/1758529993280205039
A bunch of you took the jabs because you were brainwashed, lied to, manipulated
https://rumble.com/v33xwt3-public-health-brags-about-using-social-media-to-manipulate-you.html
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gpFXnaD52uY
Government censorship – transgenderism, climate change, covid, vaccine side effects
Jen Psaki tells you they are removing posts they flag
https://rumble.com/v3hd1w6-white-house-violated-first-amendment-w-social-media-censorship-appeals-ct-a.html
OT
Congress should “take” Google Search for public use under its power of eminent domain per the 5th Amendment.
Google Search constitutes imperative basic infrastructure, or “general Welfare.”
Google Search enjoys a 91.47% market share as an effective monopoly.
I do not use google for searching and have not for a long time.
It is trivial to switch search engines. I used DDG for a long time, but there are many other censorship free privacy enhanced sources today.
Your personal proclivities indubitably carry much weight and bear profoundly.
I presume it is safe to say that you neglect and reject the significance and import of the aforementioned 91.47% market share.
Google controls the flow of information. They alone determine what opinions are allowed. So why the fight?
It is because they control 95% of the advertising and do not want their ads positioned next to comment they do not approve of because it creates a customer complaint and therefore MONEY.
They don’t give a bleep about speech. It is protecting their ad revenue.
It is too late. They are partners in election rigging to save their monopoly, and they know Trump has their number.
They have to control the narrative, without that, they can’t control the people.
Who elected Zuckerberg or Gates or Buffet or Bezos or Bloomberg or Koch or Musk or Schwab or any of these dikhead billionaires to anything?
Who are they to dictate anything to the world?
Obviously they are arms of the Intelliencge community of the Five Eyes and certainly others in other nations.
All of it was grown from Intelligence, DARPA, MIC etc.
Many of the conjoined companiesa are Intelligence fronts.
They have been used to overthrow foreign governments, and in 2020 the USA election.
So it’s not essentially just the billionaires – they are in cahoots with governments and their secret agencies.
They own the best government money can buy.
Professor Turley,
Your opposition to Meta’s right to moderate content on its site is decidedly ANTI-free speech, and based on recent oral arguments in NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, it appears, thankfully, that a majority of the Supreme Court will disagree with your campaign to rob private companies of their free speech rights.
Social media firms seek to create a curated forum that caters to the interests of their audience, and avoids unnecessarily annoying or offending them. Few users actually want a completely unmoderated social media environment, or one that accepts all content that isn’t illegal. Sites with right-wing owners, such as Elon Musk’s Twitter/X or Donald Trump’s Truth Social nonetheless have content-based restrictions in their terms of service. Heck, even your site has adopted a fairly aggressive policy of content moderation.
Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas—the two justices most sympathetic to Florida/Texas’s statutes curtailing the right of social media companies to moderate their own content —repeatedly characterized this moderation as “censorship.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh effectively responded to this trope:
“When the government censors, when the government excludes speech from the public square, that is obviously a violation of the First Amendment. When a private individual or private entity makes decisions about what to include and what to exclude, that’s protected generally editorial discretion, even though you could view the private entity’s decision to exclude something as “private censorship.”
I think that’s exactly right. If Fox News or the New York Times reject content because they don’t like the writer’s views, that is not censorship, but the exercise of their own First Amendment rights. The same goes if Elon Musk bars me from posting on his site. And that’s true even if Fox, NYT, or Musk object to my content for dubious reasons, or even downright stupid ones. Ditto if they treat right-wing speech more favorably than the left-wing kind, or vice versa.
Finally, because I assume others will bring it up, the Court addressed the states’ argument that it can bar content moderation because social media firms are “common carriers.” The Court mostly found this theory unpersuasive.
Each person should be able to decide what kinds of speech are permitted on their property. And that applies to media corporations no less than individuals. Thus, I should be able to advocate virtually any viewpoint I want. But Fox News and the New York Times should be equally free to refuse to broadcast or publish my views.
The standard rationale for common carrier regulation is that the the firms in question have some kind of monopoly power. A classic example is a situation where there is only one railroad available to move freight from Point A to Point B, in an era where the only alternative modes of transportation (e.g.—horse-drawn wagons) were vastly slower and less efficient. It is often argued that “Big Tech” social media have some sort of monopoly over the distribution of political information, especially online.
However, social media sites have nothing approaching a monopoly over the market for political information generally, or even over its distribution online. To the contrary, they command a smaller audience than rivals such as TV stations and conventional media websites.
Both the right to free expression and the right to refuse a platform to speech you disapprove of are vital elements of freedom of speech. If Fox were forced to broadcast left-wing views they object to and the Times had to give space to right-wing ones its editors would prefer to avoid, it would be an obvious violation of their rights. Moreover, in the long run, such policies would actually reduce the quantity and quality of expression overall, as people would be less likely to establish TV stations and newspapers in the first place, if the cost of doing so was being forced to give a platform to your adversaries’ views.
You made a number of excellent points. Especially this one:
“Each person should be able to decide what kinds of speech are permitted on their property. And that applies to media corporations no less than individuals.”
However, you ignored the elephant in the room, which JT mentioned numerous times: The fascist alliance between those companies and the government. That alliance is censorship. And it is a violation of 1A.
Here are just two such mentions:
“. . . government intervention as a solution to climate change denial or disinformation . . .”
“. . . massive censorship system coordinated with the government . . .”
“That alliance is censorship.”
If it is merely an “alliance,” then no, it is not censorship. If it is coercion, that is a different story. And I would agree with you.
However, Turley’s article does not reference coercion. Your first “mention” has no reference to gov’t behavior. The SSRC received a grant from a private entity, “Arnold Ventures.” His second example references coordination “with” the government rather than the government forcing content moderation.
And, his previous articles referencing the Twitter Files fail to demonstrate coercion, largely because Twitter never fully refused the gov’t requests.
Everything that touches government is force.
If that were not the case – government would not be necescary.
If you say Government – you have implied coercion.
Your argument that there is mere coordination with government is an obvious fundamental misunderstanding of government.
Where force is not necessary government is not necessary and government does not belong.
If you have government that merely coordinates with private actors – where no force is involved – what you have is anarcho-capitalism.
Actually it is closer to pure anarchy – because in anarcho capitalism you can voluntarily subject yourself to force.
Sorry but that’s not how it is viewed legally. Check out Blum v. Yaretsky, which held “that a State normally can be held responsible for a private decision only when it has exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that the choice must in law be deemed to be that of the State.” What this meant, the opinion made clear, was that government coercion that led private actors to deprive others of constitutionally protected rights did not count as state action, or implicate the Fourteenth (or First) Amendments, so long as the private actors retained the ability to decide for themselves what to do in individual cases.
If Professor Turley actually treated this blog as a discussion of legal issues rather than Fox talking points, perhaps it’s readers like you would be more informed.
Arguing that state action is always coercion just simply has no basis in reality.
Anonymous left it’s slip showing by throwing out this revealing Democrat dog whistle.
If Professor Turley actually treated this blog as a discussion of legal issues rather than Fox talking points, perhaps it’s readers like you would be more informed.
Ah! The ol’ “Fox!”dog whistle that Democrat senator Harry Read invented at the same time that he lied to Americans (from the safety of the Senate floor) during an election that presidential candidate Mitt Romney hadn’t paid his taxes in years. I remember that!
Nobody’s ever seen that snide remark thrown into the debate before as a kindergarten level cheap shot. So persuasive! Especially from an Anonymous coward avoiding posting with a username that links with their posting history.
Now, that Fox thing you ensured you used as a sophomoric little dig. If my memory is correct, after the election was over and Obama had won, when Read was asked by journalists “But you lied?”. Harry Reid smirked and said “Yes, but Romney didn’t win, did he?” Presumably he lied about Fox at the exact same time for the exact same reasons.
Sooo… your opinion is that readers will be better informed if they throw out CNN talking points about a Russia Dossier proving Trump is a bought and paid for Putin goon? MSNBC talking points that claimed Trump said neo-Nazis were very fine people?
Well how about PBS talking points that the laptop belonging to the Biden family cashier was “just Russian election disinformation”.
Or maybe they don’t have left wing talking points that get regurgitated endlessly? Rachael Maddow and Russia! Russia! Russia! doesn’t come to mind as a radical left winger slinging tropes around for talking points?
Only Fox has those talking points for use in discussions and thus your inclusion of that in your post?
You or any of the other Anonymous cowards out there get an example from CNN and the rest for lying to you about that for years, while you regurgitated those lies that were their talking points endlessly? No, you didn’t? Well, do you feel slightly embarrassed for parroting those talking points just as enthusiastically as you now parrot “Fox talking points”?
One could go on, but when you resort to very old BullSchiff about “Fox talking points”… particularly when falling back into CNN-speak with “right-wingers” about some media owners and no “left-wingers” ever mentioned owning media companies, and a Justice Kavanaugh opinion being “a trope”… you immediately get the credibility that CNN and every other media platform and left winger out there who are trying to wear out that accusation about Fox as your reward.
Which is about zero. About the same as MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow.
Always happens; anonymous cowards like you can’t keep up appearances of being informed for more than a few sentences… maybe too much exposure to Harry Read and CNN talking points is your problem. Pity… he sounded like a he might be a bright boy for a while in this discussion.
“If it is coercion . . .”
Government by its nature is physical force. It is not a suggestion agent. It is its police powers. It cannot skirt the constitution by claiming: We didn’t censor. We merely “suggested” that a private party do so.
That’s akin to arguing: We the government didn’t kidnap Joe. We merely suggested that Sally do so.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/ycJKnFVkNTsl/
What is typically called “intellectual property” is NOT property,
Most analogies involving real property – your house, your car, your purse do not work for your writing, your ideas, your creations.
“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”
Thomas Jefferson
Put simply ideas and expression do not have the attributes of real property.
The constitution grants government the power to protect them – though only for the betterment of all, but that protection does not transform their nature such that they magically acquire the attributes of real property.
IP is property.
Intangible assets are property.
I’m not sure what your point is, but if you don’t think IP is property, how would you value Coke’s recipe?
“people would be less likely to establish TV stations and newspapers in the first place, if the cost of doing so was being forced to give a platform to your adversaries’ views.”
That is certainly true if you’re trying to establish a complete fabrication of reality and “the adversaries” pummel you with reality. But when the opposite occurs, like right here on this blog, and adversaries (despite their protestations (and my comments have been blocked, too fwiw), the anti-reality group doesn’t affect the success of this blog.). The left comes here and tries all their scripted disruptive procedures, yet this blog thrives, in fact those morons actually strengthen the blog (and their adversaries resolve).
Democracy dies in darkness.
What I meant by that was not specific to a particular site; rather, that if the government prohibits media and/or social media sites from moderating content as they see fit, then you will have fewer individuals willing to start/run such businesses in the first place. Not to mention, there would be very little to differentiate one site from the next, reducing choice/competition.
Not this garbage again ?
Do you understand that attacking for stupid and anti-free speech policies, is not the same as demanding that government censor them ?
To the extent I support efforts by some states to regulate internet censorship it is purely to F$%over the efforts to Regulate more censorship by countries that do not have free speech.
I would be happy to put FB and google into a legal bid where they have to chose between following the anti-free speech laws of froiegn countries and the free speech laws of this country. And for over 200 years that is EXACTLY what the US did.
Next, while private censorship is NOT a violation of the free speech rights of others. It is also NOT a free speech right itself.
There is no first amendment right to censor others.
Restricting the ability of corporations to censor their users does NOT infringe on their ability to speak.
FB is perfectly free to SAY whatever it wants on its platform, that does NOT mean that there is a first amendment right to censor.
Further – you have a simple choice – either The DMCA provision preclusing defamation lawsuits against SM companies is unconstitutional or restricting their power to censor is constitutional. The liability of publishers for the content they publish – as opposed to the content they actually write, is based on the FACT that editing (and therefore censorship) is a choice that subjects you to liability for what you DO NOT eidt.
You can not have it both ways – you can not make choices as to will will be published and what will not, without taking responsibility for them.
Put differently – if the right to censor is a first amendment right, then it comes with the defamation liability for what your publish.
Finally, while I did not listen to those arguments yet,
There is absolutely ZERO possibility that SCOTUS is going to destroy the first amendment by privatizing it out of existance or by allowing foreign government restrictions of Free Speech in the US as a way of gaming the First amendment.
Get it straight. Free Speech means actual meaningfull free speech.
It does NOT mean you can subcontract silencing people you do not wish to listen to.
The purpose of the first amendment is to protect the right to publicly and even broadly say precisely those things that YOU wish to have silenced.
This is riddled with errors. Look up the doctrine of compelled speech.
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
The first amendment does not exist to protect what the many want.
All rights are protections of the rights of the few against the preferences of the many.
It is self evident by the FACT that some people post content that gets censored that SOMEONE wants that content.
I would further note that there is not a SM company in the world that does not provide individuals with the tools to curate their own feed.
If you do not wish content from DerSturmer – Block content from DerSturmer.
I do not use FB atleast not for speech.
But I am offended by ANY platform that tries to decide for me, rather than leave me free to decide for myself what content I wish to see.
Those of you on the left who have embraced this private censorship argument. Does this apply to other rights ?
Can your employer fire you for getting an abortion ? For private advocacy of abortion ?
Can they fire you for being black ? Can you be fired for being Gay ? for being a woman ?
If Government is barred from preventing private violations of first amendment rights – why is it not barred from preventing private violations of other rights ?
It is not like the first amendment is somehow inferior to the 14th. Or that 1st amendment rights are inferior to other rights ?
Fox news and NYT are liable through defamation law for the editorial choices them make.
“Both the right to free expression and the right to refuse a platform to speech you disapprove of are vital elements of freedom of speech.”
False. one is an actual right, the other is not.
You cited Kavanuagh – but Kavanaught did NOT say that private censorship was a right.
Regardless, you have a fundimental logical problem – I will gladly grant that private entities are free to discriminate against the speech of others, but only so long as they are ALSO free to discriminate against other rights.
If FB can violate a persons free speech rights – because they are not government and the first amendment only applies to govenrment,
Then FB can discriminate against blacks or whites, or gay people or straight people, or men or women or baptists or athiests.
You can not concurrently allow government to bar the private infringement of one set of rights without empowering government to bar the private infringement of others.
“people would be less likely to establish TV stations and newspapers in the first place, if the cost of doing so was being forced to give a platform to your adversaries’ views.”
That is true – though it is not what the left argued 40 years ago.
Further Social Media is not the same as a newspaper or TV station.
A TV station is limited that can be expressed in 24hrs. A newspaper is limited to the pages that can be paid for by advertising and delivered to the reader each day.
There is almost no cost to social media content. Worse still more content is more advertising opportunities – essentially a SM outlets profits go UP with more content – content is an asset not an expense.
You keep making apples and oranges comparisons.
Let me summarize:
Ideas and expressions are not the same as property. There is no right to an idea, or expression it is not property.
Facebooks buildings are real property, its content is not. control of content is a government created privilege not a right. You have the right to say what you want. You have the priviledge of granted by government of controlling your expression after you have uttered it.
If expressions had the same attributes as real property neither the first amendment nor the patents and copyrights clause in the constitution would be necescary.
Whenever you say you own content, expression, you are talking about a government granted priviledge, not a right.
Expression is a right. Ownership of expression is not.
If you are going to claim that First amendment rights are only protected against infringement by government – the says is true of all other rights. The first amendment is not the weaker cousin of all other rights.
Your protection from private discrimination is not independent of your protection against private censorship.
If government can constrain private discrimination it can constrain private censorship.
You should very seriously think about that.
Your claim that private censorship is a first amendment right is exactly analogous to saying private racial discrimination is a 14th amendment right.
“there is no right to an idea.”
Really?
With respect to your asinine argument regarding common carriers.
While I strongly suspect that SCOTUS is wisely reluctant to expand a concoction – common carriers that was likely a mistake from the start.
There is no difference between social media and typical common carriers.
The classic common carrier is the phone.
There is absolutely nothing communicated via phone that does not and did not have myriads of ther ways to be communicated.
Phone companies were barred from censoring content. They were barred from censoring political content.
Despite the fact that you could pen an editorial to the newspaper or send a letter, or speak in the towns square.
Cell companies are common carriers – yet there is no cell monopoly.
You used railroads as an example – it has been rare in US history that you had only one railroad. Even today the only monopoly rail service is the government run Amtrack .
Regardless anything you can transport by rail, you can transport by truck or car or horse cart or in many cases ship.
it is not likely that SCOTUS is willing to extend common carrier law to social media – but not because Social media does not have the attributes of common carriers, but because common carrier law is a mistake and extending it is a bad idea.
There is no meaningful distinction between social media and common carriers.
“A common carrier is defined by U.S. law as a private or public entity that transports goods or people from one place to another for a fee. The term is also used to describe telecommunications services and public utilities.”
There is nothing in common carrier law that would exclude social media companies.
“people would be less likely to …” that is true of pretty much every law and regulation in existance.
When government adds some requirement to privat actions those actions become less likely.
“To the contrary, they command a smaller audience than rivals such as TV stations and conventional media websites.”
You clearly no longer live in the real world.
This was true in the 70’s when the internet did not exist.
It was true in 2006 when Twitter was founded. It is not true today.
Twitter has half a billion users – can you name one news outlet with half a billion users ?
Victor Hansen discusses these self anointed global elitists. He believes as I do they pose a real threat to our Nation. They have no Natural association, they see themselves as international citizens of the world. Their billions is their power and their insatiable quest for power.
Let’s eat them…they are evil.
I thought lefties were all for free speech and ‘tolerance’. What a joke. And they consider you a ‘nazi’ if you advocate for free expression.
Welcome to the dark side JT!
antonio