I disagree with RealClearPolitics’s Bill Zeiser’s assessment of a Facebook news censorship story. You can read the whole thing if you like but the gist of it is that Facebook put a “fake news” warning on a story that was factually correct because its title was slanted.
Facebook is a private company and not bound by freedom of speech constraints. It can censor stories it doesn’t like at will. Deal with it.
I believe that Mr. Zeiser’s problem with Faceook is that it exists, it is used as a primary news source by millions of people, it has an editorial bias (to which it is entitled), and it is easily bullied by people it generally agrees with to censor people it doesn’t agree with.
The solution to that is not kvetching about Facebook. It’s to boycott Facebook and cultivate your own news outlets. Social media are lousy for news because they don’t adhere to any ordinary journalistic standards. Increasingly, neither do the online presences of newspapers and television networks. It’s hard to accept anything as the unvarnished truth any more because there are so many brushes and empty cans of varnish sitting around. Journalistic fashion has rendered the division between opinion and fact very narrow indeed.
Facebook’s business model is extremely fragile and it’s a publicly held company. Hit ’em where it hurts. Otherwise kwitcherbichen.
I have disagreed with you before on this point. Facebook, Twitter et al. are public utilities like the telephone company and as such have no right to censor postings. This should be made explicit by federal law.
In general, I deny that private companies can censor the speech or writings of their customers or employees except when the employees are acting in their official capacities.
Three hundred years ago, newspapers, which are usually privately owned, were granted “freedom of the press.” This was first down by jury nullification in the Zenger case during the colonial period. It was formalized in the First Amendment.
At that time, it was recognized that newspapers were the only means of mass communication and that any democratic process required a free press. Today, telephones, TV and radio news, and the social media are all important means of mass communication, and the freedom of all of them is necessary. Censorship of any of them is fundamentally unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court was able to invent constitutional arguments legalizing abortion and sodomy and more recently the ACA, all of which were opposed by a majority of Americans, they can certainly recognize the organs of a modern free press in the USA.
It might be noted that the US is the only country in the world with freedom of the press, freedom of speech or any of the other rights listed (not granted) in the Bill of Rights. The US Constitution is even more revolutionary today than it was 200 or so years ago.
That is untrue. The United Kingdom has freedom of the press and freedom of speech, too. There they are not quite as absolutist as they are here.
There are other rights that Englishmen have that we do not, for example, the right to cross the land. We call it “trespassing”. There are no universal rights. All are mediated by culture and custom.
The First Amendment restrains Congress; not private companies.
“abortion and sodomy and more recently the ACA, all of which were opposed by a majority of Americans”
Link goes to Gallup polls on abortion showing that it has always had support since they started poling it. The ACA only passed because the Dems managed to win 60 seats in the Senate, with hose Senators representing about 67% of the population.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
More broadly, I think that freedom of the press means that the government is not allowed to censor the writings of the press. Individual newspapers have always censored what they publish and what letters to the editor they allow to be placed in their publications. You don’t think that Drudge carefully selects (and leaves out) what it wants to promote?
Steve
A slight exaggeration. It was passed by a vote of 60 senators representing states with 67% of the population, a somewhat different thing. To understand how, consider Illinois.
In 2016 Tammy Duckworth was elected senator by a tiny bit above 50% of the vote with a turnout of under 50% of the voters. In other words she could as fairly be said to represent 25% of Illinoisans as 100%.
According to Kaiser, the favorability of the ACA remains where it has been since it was enacted with about 50% of Americans supporting it.
There’s really no story. The idea that MSNBC was out to stop this guy from voting, or that he didn’t vote is wrong. They just happened to park in a handicapped spot, which is a bad thing, but not voter suppression. And the headline was completely untrue.
These stories are written to drive older, less-savvy conservative readers to click for an instant of outrage. And guess what? The Daily Wire needs Facebook far more than Facebook needs The Daily Wire. A normal reader of the news is not going to encounter this stuff. It’s content made specifically for a Facebook feed.
Dave- Contrast that with our current state of affairs where we have senators representing about 44% of voters making law. My point was just that we had an election that by current standards was a big win by Democrats, who then passed the ACA. It was not something opposed by most people.
Steve
The ACA was also the very first piece of major social policy enacted on other than a bipartisan basis. My position is as it has been on other issues. Narrow majoritarianism is not a good basis for making changes.
A sidecar issue is whether it is just for 50%+1 of the people to vote that 50%-1 of the people pay for the majority’s health care.
Right now I’m cautious. If Facebook or any other firm (or oligopoly of firms) become the de facto commons, then I think the government can take some steps. Not censoring or controlling content, but I think the government could mandate transparency when it comes to algorithms and policies.
The problem isn’t that these companies are biased – the problem is their bias is in a black box. Editorial decisions for something like a TV newscast or a newspaper are easy to see and people can make judgments on those – the editorial decisions of an algorithm or corporate policies (like the criteria to ban groups or people from the social media platform) that aren’t clear is something else.
The issue is the nature of the medium. Traditional media like Newspapers, TV, Radio are one to many. Social media is many to many.
Curation that is accepted and necessary for traditional media seem odd in social media.
Ie we accept a Newspaper cannot print every letter to the editor. On the other hand; there is no technological reason to restrict the number of replies to a tweet.
Maybe the fact a private company can restrict things like speech is an indicator we aren’t free as we’d like to think.
I see it a little differently. I don’t think we should be relying for news on private companies that don’t subscribe scrupulously to a code of ethics.
And do we really want a society in which economics and politics are the only things? One without other values?
My opinion is humans need creative liberty and democracy, and concentrations of power prevent this. Liberty to create family, community, to create meaning and purpose. To pose questions that others may find inconvenient, and to make a life free of domination. Politics and economics should be in service to this rather than we in service to them.