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Facebook creates unaccountable international Board to decide which content gets censored

Facebook creates unaccountable international Board to decide which content gets censored

Board member: “The challenge for the Board is to decide at what point your freedom of speech ends and the human rights of others take over”

https://www.facebook.com/OversightBoard/videos/702358583868006/

Anti-conservative bias by the social media giants which dominate our means of political communication has been a topic we’ve covered for many years.

That problem is a main focus of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, and our speaking appearances and online engagement.

The online speech problem is an outgrowth of the “campus to culture” problem, where anti-free speech campus practices have migrated to high tech companies. Opposing opinions are shouted down and cancelled, and the accusation of “hate speech” has become the tool by which those with power on campus wield their power to censor.

Part of the problem in dealing with the issue is the lack of transparency. We hear a lot of anecdotal evidence of bias, in which social media censorship almost invariable runs against non-leftists, but we don’t have access to the internal data from the social media giants.

The perception and evidence of bias is even more in focus in the age of pandemic. I wrote about this recently at Townhall, De-Platforming in a Pandemic:

Since the pandemic began, conflicting reports about coronavirus – its origins, its severity, its transmission, its treatment – have left a lot of Americans with questions about the guidance provided by purportedly politically agnostic and science-based organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO). Public skepticism is apparently justified, as recent reports from Germany’s intelligence agency confirm the WHO participated in a broad-scale cover-up after China pressured the WHO to conceal the human-to-human transmission of COVID-19, costing the world an estimated four to six weeks in preparation and response to this deadly virus.

But, for social media companies, vocalizing distrust of organizations like the WHO or even expressing a view counter to that of its leaders warrants swift censorship. In April, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told CNN that her company would be de-platforming any user who posted content that went against WHO edicts. Disagreement with WHO was deemed “medically unsubstantiated” and promoting videos containing “authoritative information” from alternative but still authoritative medical sources was banned….

Yet so many of the experts acceptable to YouTube and Facebook and Twitter repeatedly have been wrong themselves. As Senator Rand Paul noted in questioning Dr. Anthony Fauci, coronavirus expert advice has resulted in “wrong prediction after wrong prediction after wrong prediction.”

There has been a potentially more damaging development at Facebook, the creation of an independent Oversight Board consisting initially of 20 people from around the world to make decisions on what content should be banned.

Politico reported on the announcement on May 6:

A former Republican U.S. federal judge, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Yemen and Denmark’s first female prime minister are among the members of a new Facebook oversight board, the company said Wednesday as it attempts to quell complaints about noxious content and ideological bias on its platforms.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the board will have final say over how to handle controversial content such as hate speech. But the move is unlikely to end the 2 billion-member social network’s political difficulties in the U.S. and Europe….

Facebook said the board’s members were chosen for their expertise and diversity, having lived in more than 27 countries and speaking at least 29 languages. They also include former newspaper editors from the U.K. and Indonesia, former judges from Hungary and Colombia, ex-government officials from Israel and Taiwan, and human rights advocates from Pakistan and West Africa.

Five Americans were selected among the board’s 20 initial members, picked to reflect viewpoints from across the political spectrum.

One of the Americans appointed is law professor Pamela Karlin, who testified in favor of impeaching Donald Trump in a moment that went viral.

What’s particularly freightening is not the people involved — assume the first 20 individuals are taking on the assignment in good faith — it’s the concept of outsourcing censorhip decisions that will limit American political speech to a board which, by Facebook’s own description, answers to no one other than the Board itself:

The Oversight Board was created to help Facebook answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression online: what to take down, what to leave up, and why.

The board uses its independent judgment to support people’s right to free expression and ensure those rights are being adequately respected. The board’s decisions to uphold or reverse Facebook’s content decisions will be binding, meaning Facebook will have to implement them, unless doing so could violate the law.

The “Purpose” of the Board, according to Facebook, is to promote free speech, but in fact, the decisions it makes will not promote free speech, but determine which of that free speech should be restricted:

When fully staffed, the board will consist of 40 members from around the world that represent a diverse set of disciplines and backgrounds. These members will be empowered to select content cases for review and to uphold or reverse Facebook’s content decisions.

The board is not designed to be a simple extension of Facebook’s existing content review process. Rather, it will review a select number of highly emblematic cases and determine if decisions were made in accordance with Facebook’s stated values and policies.

The Board is separately endowed and not accountable to Facebook:

To further ensure the independence of its decision making, both the board and its administration are funded by an independent trust and supported by an independent company that is separate from the Facebook company.

What could go wrong? Everything.

Four of the initial Oversight Board members wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Times explaining this new venture (emphasis added):

Social media affects people’s lives in many ways, good and bad. Right now, as the world endures a health crisis, social media has become a lifeline for many people, providing valuable information and helping families and communities stay connected.
At the same time, we know that social media can spread speech that is hateful, harmful and deceitful. In recent years, the question of what content should stay up or come down on platforms like Facebook, and who should decide this, has become increasingly urgent….

The oversight board will focus on the most challenging content issues for Facebook, including in areas such as hate speech, harassment, and protecting people’s safety and privacy….

We are all independent of Facebook. And we are all committed to freedom of expression within the framework of international norms of human rights. We will make decisions based on those principles and on the effects on Facebook users and society, without regard to the economic, political or reputational interests of the company….

(In the initial phase users will be able to appeal to the board only in cases where Facebook has removed their content, but over the next months we will add the opportunity to review appeals from users who want Facebook to remove content.)

…. We will focus on identifying cases that have a real-world impact, are important for public discourse and raise questions about current Facebook policies. Cases that examine the line between satire and hate speech, the spread of graphic content after tragic events, and whether manipulated content posted by public figures should be treated differently from other content are just some of those that may come before the board.

Notice the focus on “hate speech”? This sounds all too familiar to those of us on campuses who have faced the false accusation that our differing views are “hate speech.” While the First Amendment doesn’t strictly apply to private platforms, we expect that the principles of the First Amendment will apply at least generally on platforms that purport to be places for widespread public communication.

Also note the focus on “international norms of human rights”– what norms are those? The norms of the United Nations Human Rights Council, a thoroughly corrupt, anti-free speech, anti-American, anti-Israel organization? The norms of international human rights NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch which have strayed so far from their orignal missions as to be unrecognizable tools devoted to attacking Israel and western democracies? The history of international organizations is one of leftist anti-democratic anti-free speech drift that is anathema to our American foundational principles of freedom of speech.

Promotional videos posted by the Oversight Board on Twitter and Facebook demonstrate that our free speech rights will be balanced against the “human rights” of others. This all sounds so familiar to those of us who live in a campus culture where the right not to be offended is actually considered a right.

Note also that the mission creap has set in, and the Oversight Board not only will rule on Facebook decisions to take down content, it will act to take down content on its own.

Facebook is critical to our political dialogue, which is why political campaigns devote so much attention and resources to Facebook advertising. A recent Report on the Re-Open Movement notes that Facebook interaction was critical:

The results show supporters were overwhelmingly sparked to action by Facebook postings. Despite the company shutting down notices about many protest events, it remains a hub for organizing.

This political interaction will now be at the mercy of an unaccountable international Oversight Board which inevitably will drift even further left than it already is upon its initial formation, and which by its members own description, wants to moderate our freedom of speech.

This makes the problem of social media censorhip all the more important to the political functioning of our nation. It was bad enough when Facebook teams and their fact-check organizations censored speech — at least there was some accountability at least in public opinion and the political sphere. Offloading these functions at an appellate level to an unaccountable international Board not committed to our First Amendment principles is not the answer.

Donald Trump is considering a panel to examine the problem:

President Trump is considering establishing a panel to review complaints of anticonservative bias on social media, according to people familiar with the matter, in a move that would likely draw pushback from technology companies and others.

The plans are still under discussion but could include the establishment of a White House-created commission that would examine allegations of online bias and censorship, these people said. The administration could also encourage similar reviews by federal regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission, they said.

“Left-wing bias in the tech world is a concern that definitely needs to be addressed from our vantage point, and at least exposed [so] that Americans have clear eyes about what we’re dealing with,” a White House official said.

As I’ve stated in the many speeches I’ve given on the topic, my preference would be to let the market correct itself and to keep the government out of it. But given the market power concentrated in a handful of companies, the anecdotal evidence of anti-conservative bias, and now the outsourcing by Facebook of censorhip to an unaccountable international board, serious questions need to be asked and the problem cannot be ignored anymore.

[Featured Image: Facebook video screenshot]

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Comments

Katy L. Stamper | May 25, 2020 at 9:44 pm

Facebook has power because people give it their attention.

Take your time and attention elsewhere.

I have.

    notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to Katy L. Stamper. | May 25, 2020 at 10:35 pm

    Spot on.

    Of course the Communist Chinese already have formed the board and control it.

    POLITICS
    ‘Illegal’: Trump Goes After Tech Giants Google, Facebook For ‘Radical Left’ Bias

    https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/16/trump-google-facebook-antitrust/

    I’m an old troglodyte, I guess. Years ago I was encouraged by the kids to have a facebook account so I could keep up with the grandchildren’s activities. Took me no more than two weeks of nothing about the grandchildren but lots of requests for boards and nails to build a barn (from people who don’t even own a half acre) in “Farmville” to quit that and never bother with any other similar operation like twittercrap.

    I haven’t really missed these outfits. It irks me a bit when I would like to communicate but there’s no e-Mail address, only facebook or twitter to respond, but I can forego response for the serenity of not getting off the wall crap from people who should know better.

    What really irritates me is people “writing articles” which consist of a couple or three sentences introducing and placed betwixt and between copied and pasted twittercrap which isn’t even legible for senior eyes. Copy and paste of (often multiple) other’s twittercrap, unaltered for legibility, isn’t “writing”.
    /rant

Is that a male? He does not look like a pleasant person.

Communism takes root very easily.

    NavyMustang in reply to Whitewall. | May 25, 2020 at 10:06 pm

    Exactly. These companies are run by true believers. First, they’ll censor your speech. When that doesn’t work, they will reeducate you in their camps if they get power. And when we fight back, they will kill us.

    It takes root only when there is a vacuum. Same with any form of fascism.

    America has been hollowed out by an infestation of treasonous rats throughout our government and media – bought and paid for by their ratmaster, Communist China.

    No hard feelings to the Chi Comms – they did a great job of it. But we should have mass prosecutions and subsequent hangings.

OH Deplorable | May 25, 2020 at 10:05 pm

Facebook is a surveillance device, it’s used by the people that control/own our Federal Reserve to keep tabs on the political temperament of the American people.

    oldgoat36 in reply to OH Deplorable. | May 26, 2020 at 6:55 am

    When something is “free”, you are the product. The manipulation they do is just a part of the dark underbelly of FB. I am convinced that it isn’t just some brainchild of Zuckerburg which pushed it into prominence, it got a lot of government backing because of the data mining and surveillance the government can do without warrants, as you freely give them more information than even the government would want to know.

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” – Voltaire

If we only have the party line, doubt does not exist. At least that is what these totalitarians want you to believe. Totalitarians fear and hate freedom in any form.

“We are all independent of Facebook. And we are all committed to freedom of expression within the framework of international norms of human rights.”

This is like those who say, “I support the 2nd Amendment, but…” They purport to be “for” something when, in fact, they’re against it.

I’m told that FB originally had a system that allowed users to ID objectionable content, and then steered them from such content, creating a virtual “safe space” that protected users from seeing offensive material. This was obviously abandoned because it defeated the new purpose of identifying certain content, which was to prevent other people from seeing it, and not merely hiding it from the perpetually offended. The last thing in the world SJW trolls want is a content-discrimination system that prevents them from seeing, and labeling, content that they deem “offensive” so that it can be marked for deletion.

Dantzig93101 | May 25, 2020 at 10:29 pm

President Trump had better do more than just “consider” the problem, and *fast*, because the tech monopolies intend to swing the election to the Communists and deep staters. They are not gracious victors, as Czar Nicholas, his family, and a hundred million other people could testify if they were alive.

Oh goody, facebook is going to apply international norms to speech…so that means facebook won’t do the bidding of the PRC?

My bad, they will more likely apply the PRC standards to the rest of the world.

The creation of a board to design and implement standards for free expression simply means that no one is safe. Really facebook, study the French revolution, despotism by committee won’t last long before some of the board claim they are the only ones who’s ideology is pure.

Facebook apparently doesn’t get understand that all they are doing is bargaining with the wolf so that they are eaten last.

Go left… far left. #HateLovesAbortion

If I could suggest a slight edit to the following sentence:
“This all sounds so familiar to those of us who live in a campus culture where the right not to be offended is actually considered a right.”

Becomes:
“This all sounds so familiar to those of us who live in a campus culture where the desire to avoid being offended is actually considered a right.”

Or, more strongly:
“This all sounds so familiar to those of us who live in a campus culture where the authority to suppress speech with which one disagrees is actually considered a right.”

“Creep” is also spelled wrong (“creap”) in the next paragraph.

The answer is simple: just boycott anything ‘facebook’.

Btw: are you supporting the leftist propagnada on Netflix with your subscription?

    CorkyAgain in reply to TheFineReport.com. | May 26, 2020 at 1:44 am

    No, I’m not supporting either of them.

    Nor Twitter.

    I still use YouTube, but am going to BitChute more and more.

    I should probably wean myself of dependence on Amazon too.

      Katy L. Stamper in reply to CorkyAgain. | May 26, 2020 at 6:12 am

      I’m off Netflix (white writer wrote anti-white comment on Twitter).

      Off Amazon (delisted LI on Smile program, and others).

      On Gab.com and Bitchute…weaning off Youtube…. I want to learn to copy Youtube vids so I can place them on Bitchute.

      Katy L. Stamper in reply to CorkyAgain. | May 26, 2020 at 6:13 am

      Re: Amazon, I’ve found it pretty great to go directly to sellers’ sites or locate the item elsewhere.

      Like a watch. I went to InvictaStores.com and bought my watch directly from Invicta. Nice.

        Grandpa in reply to Katy L. Stamper. | May 26, 2020 at 11:25 am

        I never buy from Jeff Bozos Amazon. I use their site for identifying the names and part numbers of products I want and exploring the reviews (which can be most helpful). My purchases are made elsewhere.

      ss323 in reply to CorkyAgain. | May 26, 2020 at 9:40 pm

      I just weaned off Amazon Prime yesterday. $129+change annual Prime renewal charged to my CC despite box checked for 5 day prior notice which didn’t show up in my email.

      I have used Prime for 2 day shipping only which doesn’t happen due to coronavirus, I can understand that but I don’t use any of the other services provided with Prime membership.

      During the Prime cancellation process there is much arm twisting re the benefits, Amazon proudly informed me that Prime saved me $61.10 in shipping in the last year.

      Bye

        notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to ss323. | May 27, 2020 at 12:14 am

        That is very very typical of them.

        If a local business operated the way Amazon does…….

        Another Ed in reply to ss323. | May 27, 2020 at 4:30 pm

        $129+ to save you $61+ in shipping? Ooh! I wonder how many want to sign up for that deal.

I bet about 18 out of the 20 want Trump to lose. Their countries surely found our other presidents easier to deal with than Trump. By making it international, they can assure strong anti-Trump bias, enforced from outside our borders.

We need antitrust used against that too-big market player.

    They want PDJT to lose, because he ruined their graveytrain of corruption, funded by the Chi Comms, via the money funded to the Chi Comms.

    Kind of like how public service unions in democrat states fund democrat politicans.

    Either way: it’s graft.

If Facebook censors content on the basis of vague rules or committees, the Trump admin should take away their DMCA safe harbor. Then everyone and their brother could sue them out of existence for copyright violations.

    Milhouse in reply to InEssence. | May 26, 2020 at 1:46 am

    Trump can’t “take away” their legal status. It’s the law, and he can’t change it. It’s not some privilege they’ve been granted, it’s a legal category that Congress created because without it forums such as the one we are using right now would be impossible. This and all blogs would have to close their comment sections.

      Katy L. Stamper in reply to Milhouse. | May 26, 2020 at 6:14 am

      Mr. M, he’s such a jerk.

      SDN in reply to Milhouse. | May 26, 2020 at 7:45 am

      No? He can and should have the DOJ announce that they consider Facebook to be a publisher, and that any law or regulation that applies to publishers but not to “common carriers” such as the phone company applies to them…. and will be enforced accordingly.

        Milhouse in reply to SDN. | May 27, 2020 at 3:13 am

        No, SDN, he can’t do that. It would be against the law. Facebook is not and does not pretend to be a common carrier. Nor is it a publisher. It is an interactive computer service, just like this comment section we’re using now. And the law says that interactive computer services are entitled to moderate content and remove anything they find offensive, without thereby becoming responsible for whatever they don’t remove. Without that law Prof J would have to close this forum down.

      InEssence in reply to Milhouse. | May 26, 2020 at 8:13 am

      Therein lies the difference. I can make these comments on LI, but FB bans not only the my comments, but me as a user. It is not just me, most conservative content on FB is banned. Yet, there is nothing in FB’s user’s agreement about banning political comment. FB’s content is a product of heavy censorship, and is not in the public square. FB is clearly violating the DMCA, and the Feds should sue.

        Milhouse in reply to InEssence. | May 27, 2020 at 3:20 am

        Legal Insurrection can certainly ban any user it wants to, and it has on occasion done that. And the moderators do delete comments they find offensive, as is right and proper. If they didn’t this place would become unreadable. I wish they’d delete more comments, but it’s their place, not mine.

        It’s not true that most conservative content on FB is banned. There’s a ton of it there, and the vast majority of it stays up. But even if FB were deleting all conservative content it would have the right to do so, just as LI could choose to delete all “progressive” content but chooses not to.

        And no, FB is not violating the DMCA. Tell me which section you think it’s violating, and how. There is not one word in the DMCA that requires or expects political neutrality.

          InEssence in reply to Milhouse. | May 27, 2020 at 8:00 am

          Section 202 adds section 512 to the US code. The problem of censorship is that the censoring party can no longer be a “service provider” when there is no definition of the service being provided. YouTube, FB, and others have random user agreements that fail to define a service. The whole point of the DMCA was to allow people to post to a service, and the service was not liable, if they did not know of the post. If they knew all along, then why wasn’t it removed? This is why the US went after Megaupload.

          Random censorship (not provided in the user agreement) implies that the service is an opinion (not a post) which falls out of the DMCA safe harbor because the knowledge of the post is implied the censoring party.

          The user agreement is an agreement between the user and the service. If the agreement is breached as a matter of routine, as is the case of FB and others, then there is no definition of any service. As such, the would-be service is liable for the posts.

    CommoChief in reply to InEssence. | May 26, 2020 at 3:10 pm

    Guys,

    POTUS can’t rule be decree, and we wouldn’t want him to. POTUS is constrained by our constitutional framework, as he should be.

    That said, there are avenues for the administration to pursue.
    Should face-book suppress one side while promoting the other that could be viewed as an in kind political contribution. So the FEC, federal elections commission, may have authority to take action.

    Tech companies are highly reliant upon two visa categories. These could certainly be revised.

    Another would be tax policy. The IRS has some degree of flexibility in how it chooses to interpret a rule and discretion in what entities it audits.

    Bottom line is this isn’t a yes or no binary proposition. Other options exist for applying pressure.

      notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to CommoChief. | May 27, 2020 at 12:09 am

      Big Tech visa employees live in fear because they understand they are nothing but Step N FETCH IT Slaves……

      Milhouse in reply to CommoChief. | May 27, 2020 at 3:37 am

      Should face-book suppress one side while promoting the other that could be viewed as an in kind political contribution. So the FEC, federal elections commission, may have authority to take action.

      No, it cannot be viewed as a contribution of any kind. A contribution, by definition, is something given to a campaign. A contribution in kind is goods or services given to a campaign for no charge. But Facebook is not giving anything to anyone. It’s just doing what it can to help elect Democrats and defeat Republicans. That’s not a contribution and cannot be viewed as one.

      If the Trump campaign asks you to go around the neighborhood handing out flyers, and you spend two hours doing so that’s a contribution. You could have charged them for your time and you didn’t. But if you do the exact same thing without their having asked you to do it, that’s not a contribution. You couldn’t have charged them for it, so you didn’t give them anything. The FEC can’t do anything about it.

      If Trump were to ask the IRS to audit Facebook not only would they refuse to do it, they’d immediately tell the Dems and we’d have a real impeachment, and deservedly so. It’s illegal to use tax audits for political purposes, though Democrat administrations seem to repeatedly get away with it. And the same applies to manipulating a company’s visa requests based on political considerations.

        CommoChief in reply to Milhouse. | May 27, 2020 at 12:17 pm

        Milhouse,

        The salaries of paid content moderators who put their thumb on the scale by suppressing one side of a political debate while allowing the other side of that political debate free reign could absolutely be considered an in kind contribution.

        Especially when the these paid moderators deviate from company guidelines/policy to do so and their actions go unchecked. If the guidelines are written so broadly as to be meaningless in that the moderators are in effect empowered to make a determination untethered from an objective standard and all or nearly all of these rulings tilt in one direction that too could be considered an in kind contribution.

        The problem facebook has is that they are not a publisher so all the protection of a publisher don’t apply. Do they have some sort of safe harbor? Sure, but that would be for a jury to decide, perhaps the discovery phase would elicit a better understanding of the internal decision making about the moderators, algorithms and the States purpose v actual results.

        As to IRS, certainly given the growing share of the economy conducted online v in person a shift in audits reflecting that new percentage wouldn’t be objectionable. Still shouldn’t try and sic the IRS on anyone like an attack dog.

Designating something as hate speech is, itself, hate speech.

We really need alternatives, real freedom loving, American loving alternatives

I personally don’t use FB , but Yoy Tube, Twatter , Reddit, are all in on it,

    Try Bitchute.com.

    It is the wild west (with a lot of bizarre Jew-hatred), but it is an alternative and it is uncensored.

    Re the Jew-hatred: as a Jew, I have to admit that a lot of contempt for Jewish people is justified: there is genetic high IQ among the Jewish people; Jewish people wind up in high positions. Way too many of them tend to be limo liberals and leftists, whereby they become malignant cartoon characters, ripe for resentment and hatred.

    It’s just amazing how the Jewish limo libs/leftist exsistentially threaten the rest of Jewry.

    Katy L. Stamper in reply to gonzotx. | May 26, 2020 at 6:16 am

    Gab.com is run by Americans. Real Americans, not anchor baby types, or H-1B types.

      Milhouse in reply to Katy L. Stamper. | May 27, 2020 at 3:39 am

      I tried it once and the very first thing I saw was the most vile neo-nazi propaganda. Lots of it. I deleted my account immediately and have not been back since.

    McGehee in reply to gonzotx. | May 26, 2020 at 9:03 am

    We really need alternatives

    We have them. I’ve called it (tongue-in-cheek) peer-to-peer social networking and it consists of email and SMS/MMS.

    Long before there was Facebook and Twitter, long before there were even blogs, I ran an email distribution list (using BCC to protect the recipient list) whose recipients often redistributed what I sent out. I was paying my ISP directly for email service in those pre-Gmail days.

    I still pay for email service, and have no social-network accounts whatsoever. I see memes I’ve created and posted, reposted in blog comment threads — it still works.

healthguyfsu | May 25, 2020 at 11:33 pm

Dissent = hate speech. Comply…and oh yeah, resistance is futile

In Zuckerberg’s America the Market Corrects YOU. All of big tech will adopt this totalitarian model.

Imagine a brightly lit hellscape. A FaceCorp building shaped like a Redwood looms specter-like on the far horizon. A self-piloting Ubik drone arcs overhead then wheels north towards …

Problem with their theory is that the Constitution isn’t international, nor is it governed by international norms.

    Katy L. Stamper in reply to txvet2. | May 26, 2020 at 6:17 am

    Yeah, Zuck ought to dance with the one that brung him.

      oldgoat36 in reply to Katy L. Stamper. | May 26, 2020 at 7:03 am

      I would posit that he is. A great means of pushing propaganda for the globalist state and leftist policies. Governments around the world love the information they get from it at fairly low costs. Users are the product, nothing FB does is for the users.

        Katy L. Stamper in reply to oldgoat36. | May 26, 2020 at 9:04 am

        No, he’s not. The ones that brung him are his american college classmates, then Americans such as Peter Thiel who gave him $$ for more computers when he hit a wall with no cash, but lots of demand.

        He was born and raised in America. As the kenyan would say, He didn’t build that.

        Alinksy: hold them to their own standards.

    Milhouse in reply to txvet2. | May 27, 2020 at 3:41 am

    Problem with their theory is that the Constitution isn’t international, nor is it governed by international norms.

    Yes, but Facebook isn’t Congress, so it isn’t subject to the constitution. It’s subject only to the God-given liberties that all humans everywhere have, and those are international.

“The challenge for the Board is to decide at what point your freedom of speech ends and the human rights of others take over”

Well, I see the problem right there. He’s not speaking the same language I do. I mean, it looks like English, it sounds like English, even spelled the same way. But the words don’t mean the same thing. He’s writing and thinking in Ingsoc Newspeak, not English. Where words mean what he and the state want them to mean. And they could, of course, change their meaning at any time dependent on the whims of the leaders.

Alphabet steers. Facebook censors. Twitter twits. Yahoo yahoos. Obama spied. Clinton colluded. Bide obstructed. JournoLists hold trial by press. Polar bears hunt seals and walruses. Wind turbine gauntlets whack birds and bats. Photovoltaic farms are a blight on the environment. Diversitists wallow in liberal license to indulge color judgments. Politically congruent bigots. And, throughout, the planned parenthood protocol, her Choice, denying life and cannibalizing her profitable parts in an unprecedented celebration of excess deaths. The climate changes and remains the same. Here’s to a century of progress.

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | May 26, 2020 at 1:33 am

Fyi

Coronavirus Fifth Column

Madeline Osburn reports that “[a] network of Democratic non-profits and super PACs are funneling millions of dollars toward advertisements in key swing states, with the intent of politicizing the Wuhan coronavirus crisis and blaming the pandemic on President Donald Trump.”

The Washington Post reported the group Pacronym is planning to spend $5 million on ads attacking Trump’s response to the pandemic. Pacronym, whose board of directors includes former Barack Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, said its ads will target key 2020 swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Arizona.

Money is distributed to progressive causes by a number of Democratic PACs, e.g., Sixteen Thirty Fund. In fact, “in 2018, Politico reported that the Sixteen Thirty Fund ‘funneled millions of dollars to progressive causes’ by setting up a secret-money network of other groups, which were the ‘most prolific political advertisers of 2018’ when combined.”

Trevor Loudon has documented how “communists and socialists are infiltrating the Democrat Party — some openly, some secretly and some even running for public office on the Democratic Party ballot line.” In reality, “politicizing the growing fears, illnesses and deaths of American citizens” is a potent weapon in the Leftwing arsenal.

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/the_coronavirus_fifth_column.html#ixzz6NWSb5o2U
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

Five Americans were selected among the board’s 20 initial members, picked to reflect viewpoints from across the political spectrum.

This sentence from the Politico excerpt raises an important question: who are the conservative voices on this board? (And am I being too optimistic when I use the plural?)

Gosh, and they only pay a quarter a day.

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | May 26, 2020 at 1:43 am

PBS, the television network that is primarily funded through taxpayer dollars, is working with a media outlet that is owned by the Chinese government in order to release a propaganda film that portrays China in a positive light, as reported by the Daily Caller.

Numerous PBS affiliates across the country, which in total receive millions of dollars of federal funding, are working with CGTN, the Chinese-owned outlet, on a nationwide premiere of the film “Voices from the Frontline: China’s War on Poverty.” The film is produced by Robert Kuhn, who has ties to officials at the Chinese State Council Information Office.

PBS’s affiliate in southern California, KOCE, worked on the production of the film, which highlights Chinese president Xi Jinping’s alleged efforts to curb poverty in his country. At least one KOCE employee is listed in the film’s credits as an executive producer. The film does not disclose the fact that it was produced by the Chinese government.

The controversial decision comes as China has been facing worldwide criticism for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, from pressuring the World Health Organization to not issue warnings, to arresting and persecuting Chinese citizens who speak out about the government’s misconduct. Among other wrongdoings, China has been frequently spreading propaganda and false statements about their handling of the situation, including distortion of the numbers and falsely claiming that the virus originated in the United States.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/15/pbs-teams-up-with-chinese-media-to-produce-propaganda-film/

The Friendly Grizzly | May 26, 2020 at 4:11 am

Facebook, like Twitter, is something that I never knew I couldn’t live without.

I do not have a Facebook account. I won’t have one. Nor do I tweet. I do not Pinterest. I do not Flickr. I don’t Tinder.

None of these things ever entered my mind as something that I needed. Or, for that matter, wanted.

Katy L. Stamper | May 26, 2020 at 6:36 am

Also, the whole FB genre has unintended negative side effects.

I was speaking with a young man in his early 30s a few years ago. He and his family are doing well… home in a nice area, good jobs, beautiful children….. but the wife sees people on FB posting their wonderful vacations, and their wonderful this, and their wonderful that…. and it puts pressure on him from her…. Folks for the most part don’t post the difficulties in their lives…. gives a false impression…. Hard to compete against 100 other people’s “perfect” lives….

    @Katy

    For your 30ish friend, he is at the stage where it is ‘Mommybook’. As the kids get older,the posting decreases, especially when kids start to enter the gawky awkward stages. Also, if he is feeling the stress, an important check to remember is this: no one has a s*** day on FB.

    markymark in reply to Katy L. Stamper. | May 26, 2020 at 11:39 am

    That’s the whole point of FB. People point out only the good, fun things in their lives and then their nitwit followers have to ‘keep up with the Joneses’.

Voice_of_Reason | May 26, 2020 at 6:57 am

if Facebook makes editorial decisions and censors content, then why are they granted immunity as a “neutral platform?”

    Milhouse in reply to Voice_of_Reason. | May 27, 2020 at 3:48 am

    They’re not. I don’t know where people are getting this idea, but it has no basis. They are an interactive computer service, and the law says that all such services can delete user-provided content without thereby becoming liable for whatever they don’t delete. There is not one word about requiring them to be neutral.

2smartforlibs | May 26, 2020 at 7:43 am

Your headline left of left-wing Globalist

Since when does free speech infringe on anyone’s Constitutional rights?

Facebook is creating a committee of leftwing global elitists Lefties to what people are permitted to say. Lenin and Trotsky could only dream os such power.

within the framework of international norms of human rights

Including such international norms as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam?

Farcebook is good for keeping up with people such as high school and military friends and not much else. It has become little more than a platform for those who lean left and a glorified bulletin board service. Like someone mentioned above, in most cases I send emails to someone with whom I want to communicate openly.
.

The truth is hate speech to those that hate the truth.

Lots of people with power hate the truth.

One of the most dangerous developments of our baneful time has been the rise of social media companies in irresponsible private hands. Either they should be open to all comers–or be shut down totally.

    Milhouse in reply to JAB. | May 27, 2020 at 3:53 am

    Spoken like a true Democrat. That is exactly what “progressives” are about and exactly what conservatives are against. The first amendment was written specifically to protect us from people like you.

Facebook? Just say no.

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | May 26, 2020 at 10:16 am

Google Erases the Existence of Those Who Speak Unwelcome Truths

For the tech giants, 1984 is an instruction manual.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/google-erases-existence-those-who-speak-unwelcome-robert-spencer/

An editorial board more woke than the NYT? Quite an accomplishment.

“Hate speech” consists of any ideas, words, and philosophies that the people in power “hate”. In many cases, the people in power hate those ideas because they are the truth, and they feel threatened by the truth.

By definition, any person agreeing to sit in judgement of what speech is permissible is willing to censor speech.

Or, to put it another way, they are against the meaning and spirit of First Amendment.

Hence Facebook recruiting people from countries which have no free speech guarantees.

“…the decisions it makes will not promote free speech, but determine which of that free speech should be restricted…”

This is so painfully clear, only an academic could misunderstand it.

This is exactly why I do not use Fakebook.

henrybowman | May 26, 2020 at 7:28 pm

Anyone who cares already knows that Facebook, Twitter, and Google are biased and unreliable.

As far as I can figure out from this article, Facebook’s censorship policies just went from stupid, untrustworthy, and unappealable to double-secret stupid, untrustworthy, and unappealable. I really don’t see that the difference here is going to matter to the vast majority of the people who already couldn’t make the first regime work.

BierceAmbrose | May 26, 2020 at 10:27 pm

Why would I want to hear what FactTwitOogle(SoftZon) wants to feed me?

They make money commoditizing descriptions of and access to my humble self — they wanna keep me on my corner, n make me look pretty to the Johns. And they “grow” by herding more providers to more customers, not by bettering their offer.

There’s a lot of money if you take a cut of all the truck stop parking lot commerce — services you neither invented nor provide — n you don’t have to do any of that pesky product development or quality control. It’s no wonder governments like these folks; that’s exactly the government model. Their soulless-mates.

More is better, and best is when you can’t escape their “market”, conveniently feeding their founder-operators’ meglomania at the same time. Again, exactly like the government types. What’s the point of taking over health care if people can get health care outside of what you’ve taken over, for one hypothetical.

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | May 27, 2020 at 12:35 am

Sorry, media: You’re not victims no matter how much ‘abuse’ you take

https://nypost.com/2020/05/25/sorry-media-youre-not-victims-no-matter-how-much-abuse-you-take/

Funny, I always thought freedom of speech was a human right…

    henrybowman in reply to openeyes. | May 27, 2020 at 9:36 pm

    Socialists pretend that simply enunciating the words “the human right not to be offended” makes it true.