Set Knightly
Government companies are flagging posts as”false information”for Facebook. Basically telling web companies who to censor. We’ve always thought as much, but now they’ve really confessed.
Jen Psaki, Biden’s Press Secretary, stated as much in a press rundown last week:
We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread out disinformation”
If true– and that’s never an offered when Psaki is talking– it’s a frank admission that the White Home is actively breaching the very first amendment rights of US citizens (and potentially the human rights of foreign nationals too).
The concern of censorship on the web is one we have actually discussed at length at OffG. It has been slowly and steadily increasing for over a years, with significant velocity after the Ukraine conflict kicked it to the top of the to-do list in 2015.
Every act of terrorism, every controversy, every election … every “pandemic” is new reason to put fresh limitations on who is permitted to say what, where.
This culminated in every single social networks and internet platform coordinating to entirely remove the incumbent President of the United States from the web.
News that X celebrity, Y journalist or Z website has actually been deleted or demonetized or de-platformed is a daily incident now. The web, or at least the mainstream internet, has actually ended up being a quasi-police state. The digital Gestapo knock on doors in the middle of the night and * poof * … the dissident voice is silenced.
The mainstream media is, of course, fine with this. They outright refuse to talk about “censorship”. Rather selecting to discuss “free speech having consequences”, or arguing that “free speech needs a brand-new definition in the age of social media”
The “liberal” or “progressive” position has actually constantly been that totally free speech is just about state suppression, not about private business or individuals.
The argument has actually always been that Facebook/Twitter/Google etc. are personal business that have every right to choose what appears on their platforms. Obviously, if the state is actively advising the private companies on what to remove … that argument collapses to dust.
Psaki’s casual discovery implies this sophistry is no longer just realistically flawed, it is now naturally deceitful.
It likewise verifies that the pantomime of government vs social networks is simply that … a pantomime. Whenever a political leader rails versus Facebook for permitting hate speech, or complains the absence of guidelines for internet giants, they are lying.
It’s a false conflict. A constructed PR exercise designed to conceal a fundamental fact– The federal government tells Facebook what to remove, and Facebook removes it.
They stated it, and they can’t unsay it … however they’ll probably attempt to stop us repeating it.