Gag orders by ‘social media’ bosses attack political rights
https://themilitant.com/2020/11/21/gag-orders-by-social-media-bosses-attack-political-rights/
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
Vol. 84/No. 47
November 30, 2020
Growing restrictions and monitoring of political views by censorship
officials at Facebook, Twitter and other “social media” are a danger to
political rights. Liberal thought-control overseers have interfered with
or blocked comments and sites that run the gamut from tweets by
President Donald Trump to a Facebook page about a conference on
solidarity with the Cuban Revolution.
“Social media,” which is supposed to be a neutral location where anyone
can express an opinion or start a conversation group, already poses a
serious threat to working people. It facilitates police and government
spying on individuals and groups. As the class struggle heats up,
workers fighting to build and strengthen unions and for Black and
women’s rights can be targeted.
Under the pressure of liberal and middle-class radical organizations,
the bosses at Twitter, Facebook and other sites — who make millions from
running them — have put political censors and “fact checkers” to work
deciding what’s politically correct and what should be flagged or shut down.
What Facebook administrators did to the “Stop the Steal” Facebook group
is a good example of how the right to freedom of speech is being
attacked. The “Stop the Steal” Facebook page was created at 3 p.m. Nov.
4 by 30-year-old Kylie Jane Kremer, who runs an organization called
Women for America First. The presidential election had taken place the
day before in a very tight race between Trump and Joe Biden with
inconclusive results in several states.
The group uploaded a video showing a crowd outside a polling station in
Detroit, charging that “Biden is stealing the vote.” Within 22 hours,
the group had amassed over 320,000 users, making it “one of the
fastest-growing groups in Facebook’s history,” according to the New York
Times.
Facebook then promptly deleted the group from its system, just 23 hours
after it had begun. This group was organized around “delegitimization of
the election process,” charged Facebook spokesman Tom Reynolds,
attempting to explain its disappearance.
“They were flagging our posts,” Kremer told the Times. “This is what
they do, they censor.”
These self-appointed online political censors have joined in the
four-years-long effort to oust the Trump administration, something they
hope the election has accomplished. Biden himself said he favored
Facebook censoring Trump’s “threatening behavior and lies.”
Both Facebook and Twitter officials have begun “fact checking” and
placing disclaimers on comments they don’t agree with. They did so for
Trump’s tweets where he called mail-in ballots “fraudulent.”
Twitter banned all political advertising leading up to the election. In
August, Facebook bosses announced the removal of 14,200 online groups,
claiming they were “militarized social movements.”
Yoel Roth, who has been designated as “head of site integrity” at
Twitter, said in a blog that his goal is “to limit the spread of
potentially harmful and misleading content.” But he doesn’t say a word
about his own political record of railing against Trump’s presidency.
Twitter officials went so far as to shut down the New York Post ’s
account Oct. 14 for a story the paper ran on business dealings in
Ukraine by Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son. Also closed were the accounts
of White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany, the “Team Trump” campaign
account, and that of Politico journalist Jake Sherman. This attack on
freedom of the press was reversed two weeks later when, under pressure,
Twitter restored the Post’s account.
The point here is not whether Trump, his supporters, or anyone else is
right or wrong. The Constitution gives everyone the right to express
their opinion, and this is important for the working class. Instead,
liberal “do-gooders” like those on social media have anointed themselves
to determine what is “politically correct.”
But, as the experiences of the Socialist Workers Party and other
proletarian fighters has proven, whenever censorship like this starts
up, it inevitably ends up being aimed at the working class. It is the
working class that needs free expression to discuss and debate a
fighting way forward.
Just like pro-Trump forces, Cheryl LaBash, who writes for Struggle for
Socialism and is a national co-chair of the National Network on Cuba,
had her personal Facebook page deactivated Oct. 28. Unlike “Stop the
Steal” groups, LaBash had joined in calls for liberals and radicals to
“Occupy the streets” if it looks like Trump is trying to steal the
election. “This is no idle threat,” Struggle for Socialism wrote,
“Trump has his own paramilitary police, Homeland Security, the support
of the most virulent and reactionary police departments, and a myriad of
violent, racist, vigilante-type groups.”
LaBash said other groups that had joined with her to call for a protest
on Nov. 4 in Baltimore along these lines had been shut down as well.
Censoring Cuba solidarity event
Facebook political censorship has also been extended to include
supporters of the Cuban Revolution. On Oct. 29 Facebook deleted the
National Network on Cuba’s events page for a Nov. 14-15 online
solidarity with Cuba conference. The page reported on panels being held
on “After the U.S. Elections: For Normalization! Why We Must End the
Blockade on Cuba!” and “Saving Lives Campaign — Bringing Cuba’s Example
to the U.S. and Canada During the Global Pandemic.”
And it listed speakers, including José Ramón Cabañas and Josefina Vidal,
Cuba’s ambassadors to the U.S. and Canada; Fernando González, president
of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples; and doctors,
elected officials, and labor and religious figures.
To justify this decision, Facebook censors said, “We don’t allow
symbols, praise or support of dangerous individuals or organizations on
Facebook.”
The idea that public forums that extend a platform to Cuba’s ambassador
to the U.S. should be arbitrarily shut down is a dagger in the heart of
freedom of speech.
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Sam Harris
“Are you really surprised by the endurance of religion? What ideology is likely
to be more durable than one that conforms, at every turn, to our powers of
wishful thinking? Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in
which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases
and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a
refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has
good reason to believe. The methodology isn't perfect, and the history of
science is riddled with abject failures of scientific objectivity. But that is
just the point-these have been failures of science, discovered and corrected
by-what, religion? No, by good science.”
― Sam Harris
