Reining in social media censorship, and ending the debate commission

 

There is increasing evidence supporting the idea that certain social media platforms are getting too big for their already huge britches. Two of them, Twitter and Facebook, cannot seem to kick the habit of censoring some of their participants.

As the owners of a platform, Twitter and Facebook have complete control of it, of course. And both of them have millions of users, thereby putting them in a very small class with a lot of weight to sling around.

And because of their huge number of users and the influence that those big numbers carry with them, they should not arbitrarily restrict or block what some users post, while leaving others alone to post as they please. 

We also need to keep in mind that these platforms are under no legal obligation to monitor the postings of their users for accuracy, only for certain criminal and intellectual property-based claims, as are those sites classified as “publishers.”

In fact, social media are protected from legal action for what their users post by 47 U.S.C. § 230, a Provision of the Communication Decency Act (CDA), unlike media that are considered publishers, such as newspapers and broadcasters.

Section 230 says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." 

This means that online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do. Twitter and Facebook are not responsible for the truth/accuracy of any posts made by users, beyond the criminal and intellectual property-based claims mentioned earlier.

Despite the protections the CDA provides to social media, both Twitter and Facebook routinely block user posts/comments that breach their nebulous “rules of the road,” often on the premise of inaccuracy.

So why are Twitter and Facebook so concerned with what their users have to say on their platform, when they are under no legal obligation to be concerned about accuracy and such?

And, as it turns out, most or all of those censored posts/comments are made by … wait for it … conservatives/Republicans.

Among users that have been, and perhaps still are, arbitrarily blocked or restricted are President of the United States Donald Trump, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, the satire site The Babylon Bee, and the 219-year-old New York Post, the fourth largest newspaper in the country. The latter had all references to a story it published on the Hunter Biden email situation removed/blocked by Twitter, even when made by other users.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week called it “unacceptable” that his site blocked users from sharing links to the Post story without providing a clear message as to why it was taking the action. But is that all that Twitter did that was improper?

“Social media companies have a First Amendment right to free speech. But they do not have a First Amendment right to a special immunity denied to other media outlets, such as newspapers and broadcasters,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai tweeted recently.

Pai recently announced that the FCC plans to “clarify the meaning” of Section 230 that protects these tech giants from being held responsible for content posted by their users.

“The Commission’s General Counsel has informed me that the FCC has the legal authority to interpret Section 230. Consistent with this advice, I intend to move forward with a rulemaking to clarify its meaning,” Pai added.

Perhaps, if social media platforms are going to act like publishers, they will be held to the same legal standards and eligible for the same potential penalties, as are newspapers and broadcasters. Most likely, arbitrarily censoring some users for certain infractions, but not all of them, will carry serious penalties.

These Left-leaning platforms are all too happy to cheat to help push their political agenda. They should not be allowed to use their platforms to affect the beneficial information that users see, and perhaps especially when that information has influence on election choices.

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The Presidential Debate Commission has come under criticism, particularly from President Donald Trump’s campaign and his backers on the political right, for what those critics charge are politically motivated actions.

Without getting into the weeds of those charges, the Commission is the sole agent that organizes the presidential debates, with all details based upon what its members alone decide.

Instead of using an independent commission, that could conceivably be biased, why not allow the campaigns of the two, or perhaps three, candidates who have the most support to work together to establish the details of the debates, including the number of debates, their locations, who the moderators will be, what topics will be included, etc.

With campaign officials agreeing on these details, there would be much less for individual campaigns to disagree with, and it might even produce better debates.

The debate commission system has been around for a long time. Maybe it is time for a new approach to presidential debates.

If you lose, improve your game; don’t change the game to suit you

What do people do when they can’t win by being better, but cannot stand to lose? The answer often is to fudge a little, or a lot, rather than to gracefully accept defeat, and try to improve.

Pitchers threw illegal spitballs to win. Some quarterbacks prefer underinflated footballs. Election officials stuff ballot boxes, encourage unregistered people to vote, or vote often, or simply report false totals.

Sometimes, those who can’t win under existing rules want to change the rules to make it easier to win, but they often choose the easier route of relying on preferable, though improper, interpretation of the rules.

Democrats once merely thought about things differently from Republicans, but worked within the existing, long-standing and sensible election system created by our Founders. Not so much these days.

What we are witnessing today is a broad coalition of people trying to silence ideas and points of view they disagree with, rather than try to win a debate against those opinions in the light of day.

We see this in the malpractice of some media outlets, both old (print media and radio/TV news providers), and new (social media etc.).

A veteran newsman, Ted Koppel, 25-year host of ABC’s “Nightline,” from 1980 to 2005, agrees that President Donald Trump is “not mistaken” when he says the major media are “out to get him.” “We are not the reservoir of objectivity that I think we were,” he told Marvin Kalb at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace earlier this month.

“We have things appearing on the front page of The New York Times right now that never would have appeared 50 years ago. Analysis, commentary on the front page,” Koppel added.

Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter, frequently receive criticism from conservatives, who say they are singled out and censored. Hardly ever do liberals/progressives have this complaint. And today, if you say certain newly unpopular things, you might be charged with a crime.

College campuses, once the arena for lively and beneficial debate of ideas, both friendly ideas and otherwise, now often ban conservative speakers from campus when heated protests against them arise. Claiming safety as the reason, administrators ban these speakers. But whose safety is at risk, and safety from whom?

The conservative speakers and those who support them are at risk of violence because campus leftists cannot abide those who do not think like they do. And rather than disciplining the violent protesters and restoring order and healthy debate to the learning environment, college administrations take sides and cave in to the leftists.

Stories of political indoctrination replacing or supplementing the presentation of subject matter in schools, all the way from colleges down to elementary grades, are not uncommon, particularly at the higher education levels.

Thanks to the abandonment of professional ethics by the leftist media and leftist educators, free speech is being stamped out, replaced by an “our way is THE way” message.

Along with free speech, important historical monuments and other fundamental elements of our democratic republic are under attack. Changing inconvenient rules is gathering a significant following. Some of the Democrat presidential hopefuls have targeted the Electoral College, and some have taken aim at the Supreme Court.

Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), both of whom see themselves someday wearing the president’s title, are ready to chuck the Electoral College in order to earn that title.

And much of the electorate has been uneducated or mis-educated in the whys and wherefores of their country’s system of government, and have no idea why this is a bad thing. 

As a safety device – an “insurance policy,” in common parlance – they now want to stack the United States Supreme Court with more activist justices, who will focus on desired outcomes, not on constitutional and legal original meaning and intent.

This group includes Robert Francis O’Rourke (D-Texas), who calls himself by the Hispanic nickname “Beto,” to attract votes. And the previously mentioned Sens. Harris and Warren, along with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) are on board with this “solution” to their electoral problems.

And if changing those rules isn’t sufficient to win elections, some also want to lower the voting age to 16, and even allow illegal aliens to vote. Claiming “voter suppression,” they complain that asking people at polling places to prove they are eligible to vote, one of the most valued rights of a United States citizen, is somehow voter suppression.

Missing the essential point, liberals/progressives say, “If the Founders were alive today, they would think differently about things than they did back then.” The point they miss or ignore, of course, is that the Founders were not speaking about specifics, but about principles in creating a unique system of government.

Never before in recent history has an American political party been so determined to trash so much of the design of a government that has proven to be so superior to any other in history as today’s most prominent Democrats.

Are they really so desperate to impose their will on the rest of us that they will act to take down the entire country in order to gain power?

Many on the left are cheating; tipping the scales in their favor

Why is it that those on the left feel it’s necessary to put their fingers on the scale to tip it in their favor, or will work to change the rules to achieve their purposes, and have little or no hesitation in doing so?

We saw this when the Obama IRS punished conservative applicants for non-profit status with a grossly slow and difficult application process.

Activist judges often reinterpret the Constitution and laws to mean something more to their liking than what was originally intended.

We are now learning how the Department of Justice misused procedures in an effort to influence the 2016 election.

We have seen how so much of the media ignores positive stories about President Donald Trump and the good things that are happening, and instead favors stories that benefit Democrats, ignoring their duty for balance and objectivity.

This accusation is one that many dispute, of course, not wishing to give any credence to such complaints. Trump angers Democrats and a large portion of the news media by labeling the practice “Fake News.”

The Media Research Center provides some detail to illustrate this behavior with three examples.

First up: “On Aug. 8, Republican congressman Chris Collins of the Buffalo, New York, suburbs was indicted for insider trading and lying to the FBI. ABC, CBS and NBC played this story to the hilt, with 18 minutes and 24 seconds of coverage in just the first 24 hours.” 

Then, on Aug. 21, “prosecutors indicted California Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter on charges of wire fraud and campaign finance violations. The morning and evening newscasts on ABC and CBS spent a total of 4 minutes and 44 seconds covering the story in the first 36 hours. In contrast with Collins, Hunter was ‘lucky’ that there was breaking anti-Trump news – the conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the guilty plea of former longtime Trump confidante and lawyer Michael Cohen to charges of campaign finance violations.”

But then, “These very same three networks, these champions of public integrity, were bored to tears by the indictment and trial of former Democratic Congressman Chaka Fattah of Philadelphia. During the year and a half between his 2015 indictment and 2016 conviction and sentencing for misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal, charitable and campaign funds, the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening programs offered a measly 68 seconds of ‘news.’”

An actual conviction of a Democrat got barely more than a minute combined among the three networks over 18 months, while unproven charges brought against two Republicans earned more than 23 minutes of air time in just 36 hours, roughly 22 times more, not counting the differences in the time frames of the cases. And Collins by himself received 16 times the attention that Fattah got.

Facebook and Twitter control posts and tweets and of people who express ideas their employees disagree with, mostly conservative ideas, although they cloak this by saying these items do not comport with their community standards. Google searches produce results that reflect the left’s positions at the top, rather than a non-political set of results.

These things occur because those in charge disagree with conservative ideas and values, and work to keep people from seeing and discussing them.

America, being the Land of the Free, is a place where contradictory ideas exist and are encouraged, and where they are freely debated. Persuasion is the method by which ideas and values achieve dominance; force and coercion are against the rules. Or they used to be.

But when the Left can’t win the debate or gain support for its ideas through civil debate and discussion, and then won’t accept that its positions failed to gain traction with a huge number of people, it then resorts to other means.

Their ultimate goal is control, therefore no method is off limits: the ends justify the means. Cheating and unfair practices is now the preferred methodology of the increasingly socialist left.

And if they gain control of the Congress, the presidency, and the courts, they will be in the position to impose all manner of control over the people.

The left has already proposed some wild ideas, one of which would have made Trump’s victory impossible, had it been in effect. It wants the presidency determined by the popular vote, not through the Electoral College, which has been the process since the early days of the country, and for good reason. “It didn’t work for us in 2016,” they say, “so let’s change the process.”

Even more absurdly, they say, since this guy we really don’t like named Trump won, let’s do away with the presidency.

Other unworkable ideas include: A college education for all is no longer an option; it is now a right. Free health care, which is so expensive it would bankrupt the country, must become reality. People with no skills or training who work in the lowest level jobs must be paid $15 an hour.

This is the type of thinking that produced those wondrous and desirable places like Castro’s Cuba and today’s Venezuela, the antithesis of what America was created to be.