Censorship and Corporate Control
What Big Tech’s Recent Use of Censorship Can Show About Our Future
What a relief it was, in that moment to learn that President Trump’s twitter had been temporarily banned. The bat-shit insanity had gone on long enough. The biggest narcissist to ever walk this earth, unable to take a step back, riled many of his firmest loyalists to the point of an insurrection and that was the final straw. Twitter later permanently suspended his account “due to the threat of further incitement of violence”. Facebook did the same. I was relieved about at least the first measure due to the events of the day and what was going on in my city and our country. Although this was the first instance of censorship that genuinely provided relief and possibly the last as I thought about it more. Big tech continued to make sanctions on speech deemed in violation of their terms in the coming days. Facebook even went as far as locking pacifist Libertarian (and often Trump critic) Ron Paul from his account for “repeatedly going against community standards” after a post on the topic (they later claimed this to have been done by mistake).
Here, I unpack my perspective on how big tech is not doing anything illegal and is possibly doing what they may believe is a moral and ethical obligation; but why I think we should have concern about the precedents that they are setting, not just with regard to censorship and narrative control, but with regard to total corporate control as well.
The First Amendment Does Not Apply to Private Companies
The first amendment of our constitution provides us with freedom of religion, expression, assembly and speech. It reads as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This is a pretty straightforward clause. It makes no mention of private industry to grant us with this right, even those in the business of communication. There is no way to make the claim that the people and algorithms running the big tech forums such as Facebook and Twitter are in violation of our first amendment rights, as it simply does not apply to them. Should our founding fathers have seen our generation’s technological and communications advancement coming when they wrote this? Should they have seen a wireless, virtual, real-time, direct-to-user forum emerging in the hands of private industry? Electricity hadn’t yet been harnessed and the telegraph had not yet been invented. I don’t think they saw social media coming. Most of us didn’t see it coming.
Big Tech owns responsibility for the maleficence of its platforms and is using flagrant censorship to clean up its mess.
It is with incredible likelihood that right now people are plotting, online and offline, to wage acts of violence in the city where I live and many other cities in our nation. As of right now I’m living my life (currently outside the National Guard perimeter) as normal, but I do worry about this. I want to make it clear here, that I am not defending anyone’s right to organize domestic terrorism or spread fascist propaganda or any form of misinformation.
Facebook, Twitter, et al have acted as super spreaders of all types of misinformation and divisiveness for years, targeting users’ minds with heat seeking missile-like algorithmic accuracy. Do they now feel it is their responsibility to mitigate the damage that their ad-based revenue model and algorithms have helped cause? Do they feel an ethical obligation to shut down speech that could lead to violence to cover themselves legally?
It could be argued that extremists are just going to keep jumping deeper into the message board threads to plot their mayhem and that many of the violent extremists are already there. I’ve never looked at Parler, but I assume nobody is plotting specific attacks there. Maybe a lot of vague “Where We Go One We Go All” -type threats or the occasional, “lets go take our country back from Antifa, BLM and the radical left!” but I just can’t see see the preparations of war or terrorism happening on Parler, Facebook and Twitter. Maybe that’s just my observation, which, as I stated, is limited. It could also be argued that pushing these users away from the mainstream platforms is making it harder to conduct intelligence about any plans.
Additionally, it could be said that censoring the speech of even moderate conservatives, on the conventional platforms (which is happening) is only adding fuel to their propaganda machine, alienating the Moderate-Right and radicalizing even more.
Reasons we should be worried about Big Tech having this much authority to control the narrative.
If you are in favor of this censorship and these firm’s legal right to do so, it is important to acknowledge an important detail. After big tech’s show of force with the President’s Twitter it is now incredibly clear that Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and the forces that influence their decisions as CEOs, have, in some instances, more power than the US Federal Government.
It may be very tempting to forgive them for shutting down Trump specifically and for doing what they can to try to dampen the swells of unrest, but we should question their motivations overall. We have witnessed them profit from and turn a blind eye to the formation of this culture war and the surfacing of hate for years. I do not believe they are acting for the good of humanity, but merely to try to earn their seat on the “right side of history” by standing up against the rise of fascism.
These firms’ primary function is not for users to be able to connect and keep in touch with friends and family. Their primary function is not for you to share cute photos of your kids or your pets. Their primary function is also not for users to post crazy conspiracy theories or fight on the virtual front lines of the culture war. These are features of these platforms which keep users’ eyes locked to their illuminated rectangle of choice, while they are pumped full of highly targeted (and at certain times politically divisive) advertisements. Advertisements which are tailored specifically to them using the personal data that they have willingly surrendered in exchange for that nice steady drip of sweet narcotic-like dopamine released with every new post they scroll past, whether they like or agree with the content or not.
The primary function is to support the revenue model to keep making more money and increase their stock price. No amount of executive decision making at the top of these firms can redirect that at this point because they answer to investors and boards of directors.
My point is that these corporations are too big, they have too much influence and they do not owe us any rights. What ideas will be censored next? That depends on the motivation of those in control and probably has a lot to do with what other corporate or potentially state interests many of them are associated with as well.
Will they intend to continue influencing irresponsible consumerism while consumers increase their debt? This is an obvious one.
Will they want to maintain the status quo of the military industrial complex and keep the wars going and never reverse course on our culture of foreign interventionism? Yes.
Could they choose to limit speech about alternative or complementary medicine practices for the benefit Big Pharma? Why not?
I have nothing at all against entrepreneurship or business of any size, although I admit I do have bias favoring small to mid-sized, independent businesses over corporate chains and mega-conglomerates or anything with a ticker symbol. I think we need to be more mindful of where our consumer spending power goes and decide whether we’d rather live in a place with a thriving small business and artisan economy or an economy driven by Amazon and Wal-Mart. I think many people in our society would be much happier, productive and feel more of a sense of purpose if people were empowered and encouraged to be their own boss, get paid to do their own craft (whatever that means to them), or work in cooperatively-owned businesses instead of working for the proverbial “man”. I don’t even have a problem with big business when approached with ethics in mind for the benefit of all stakeholders (not just shareholders). That said we have handed over so much control to entities that have proven to be malevolent, especially with regard to big tech.
It is concerning enough that we have a government riddled with corruption on both the Right and the Left, but at least we have a constitution that protects certain rights from their infringement. Why aren’t we concerned with the level of authority we have placed with major corporations that don’t owe the people any rights at all?
What are some potential solutions to this problem?
Full-scale boycott? This won’t catch on. People won’t be willing to disrupt the status quo of their modern internet social lives, especially during this time of pandemic where interaction may present risk of infection or infecting someone. Nor should people be asked to do this. That said if you think deactivating social media is the right thing for you, feel free.
Move away from ad-based revenue model in favor of a subscription (Netflix) model or a tiered subscription (Hulu) model. The firms can charge a reasonable monthly subscription fee per account and not use any ads.
Of course there is the concern that more impoverished people might not be able to afford the subscription fee. They could leave the ad-based model in place as an alternative, but implement protections on individual user’s ad content with reasonable non-ideological ethics-based enforcement (How do you do this though, when people define ethics differently?).
In addition to reducing platforms’ use of advertisements, the subscription model could also help purge excessive nefarious bot use. I don’t know what the numbers would look like, but this model might be a hit to the bottom line and thus not the direction Facebook and Twitter will want to take.
Strengthen anti-trust laws to break the big tech conglomerates up and impose additional pressure on them for protection of privacy and speech. Anti-Trust measures have been used in our nation’s history and currently garner bi-partisan support as they relate to big tech. Democrats and Republicans tend to disagree on the primary reason why to exercise Anti-Trust measures with Democrats leaning more toward privacy and misinformation and Republicans more toward censorship, but from my perspective, they agree on more than they disagree. Regardless, something needs to happen here. Why is there even a government if they cannot step in at a crucial time like the present?
Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) presidential campaign posted a narrative on how and why we should break up big tech on March 8, 2019 during the initial phases of the Democratic Primary. She proposes designating large tech platforms as “platform utilities” which “would be required to meet a standard of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory dealing with users.” She also proposes unwinding the firms from their mergers (eg. Facebook from WhatsApp etc.) to promote competition. She concludes, “Healthy competition can solve a lot of problems. The steps I’m proposing today will allow existing big tech companies to keep offering customer-friendly services, while promoting competition, stimulating innovation in the tech sector, and ensuring that America continues to lead the world in producing cutting-edge tech companies. It’s how we protect the future of the Internet.” Her Medium post can be read here.
More recently, Representative Ken Buck (R-CO) submitted a report to the house Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Anti Trust, Commercial and Administrative Law on October 6, 2020 entitled “The Third Way: Antitrust Enforcement in Big Tech.” His report acknowledges his support for Anti Trust measures with a greater emphasis on the silencing of conservative speech. He expresses that sweeping changes could lead to unintended consequences for the economy and argues a more targeted approach rather than excessive regulation. The report concludes, “It’s clear that the ball is in Congress’ court. Companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have acted anticompetitively. We need to rise to the occasion to offer the American people a solution that promotes free and fair competition and ensures the free market operates in a free and fair manner long into the future.” The report can be found here.
In Conclusion
It is not my intention to sound too conspiratorial here, however, we need to wonder what the interests and motivations are of the people in control of these communications giants and how these interests may change. We also need to worry about who has the authority to take over these platforms.
We need to think about the precedents being set right now, not just as it relates to censorship and our lack of First Amendment rights from private corporations but, what doors this practice is opening up for mega corporations and their investors to grasp even more control over American society as a whole and do with it what they wish?
I’m not even calling big tech evil. This thing has snowballed so far out of the hands of the humans in charge of its control. They are in way over their heads in service of the machine and, society is completely addicted to their platforms. The very technology that helped us communicate like nothing before and brought us together with 1000 of our best friends is also the machine that has accelerated our division and brought our society to the brink of collapse. Let us be cognizant of the problems associated with this system and push our representatives to put aside ideological differences to do their jobs and make changes to create a better system. I guess we, too, need to change on the inside for this to work.
