Not censorship to suppress falsehoods (or actual national secrets) but to suppress a true story. How are actions like this not a violation of the first amendment to the US constitution? The Federal Government suppressing speech.
Where is the Justice Department's investigation?
It seems like egregious overstepping. Remember when Qwest refused the FBI requests to phone data and we all hailed them for sticking to principles when ATT and the rest just said "yessirs!"
Well it sounds like Facebook chose to self-censor after talking with the FBI. But they still had the legal right to not do so.
It is a stickier than that though - I imagine Facebook fears regulation, not criminal prosecution. And if so, perhaps that fear led to the act of self-censorship. Can the government unconstitutionally suppress free speech via the threat of regulation? I personally don't think so.
>Well it sounds like Facebook chose to self-censor after talking with the FBI. But they still had the legal right to not do so.
The optics around this interaction are extremely unethical. Whether or not there was any actual legal pressure is only half of the issue. The other half is the appearance of unethical behavior.
This is an odd statement I'm having trouble following on basically every level.
1. the article clearly states the FBI did not specifically mention the Biden story.
2. It's odd to then claim they followed the FBI's suggestion to "buy good will" on other fronts. (Unclear how FBI goodwill would help, if your statement about Facebook "fearing regulation the most" is true).
3. Regardless, the FBI is part of the executive branch - it does not prosecute nor regulate. On a related point, the FBI is alleged (not necessarily proven) to be right/conservative-leaning. So it's a strange suggestion the FBI were trying to somehow pressure Facebook to censor anti-Biden media, at least based on what we know about the agency. It could be true, but would require some backing evidence as the FBI is "supposed" to be apolitical, but if anything it has been criticized for leaning conservative.
4. You single out "Companies like Facebook" as the issue, but the article states the Washington Post and New York Times actually tried to imply the New York Post article and emails were false (only to later acknowledge "some" emails were authentic).
It's not clear to me that social media restricting an article is the primary issue, vs. prominent news outlets which are trusted as a primary source by millions of voters, claiming an article was disinformation, only later to actually perform an investigation and acknowledge it was true.
Both things of course are highly problematic. But it seems reasonable to assume if the major news outlets didn't claim the story was disinformation, it would've been less likely to have been incorrectly censored as disinformation by social media platforms who were warned by the FBI about Russian disinformation.
I wasn't referring to this specific case, but rather the mentality of big multinational companies when it comes to government interactions.
I've been in the C-suite when concerns about government regulation have been discussed. You "play ball" on some things in order to avoid other, worse things happening.
I have no idea if Zuckerberg made this trade-off.
I'm just saying I wouldn't be surprised in the least if that was the strategy.
It's not like Facebook wasn't already in the hot seat when it came to Congress.
Yet a government official can't block you on Facebook. Was that made explicit in the constitution?
I think the better reason is that they never actually told Meta to suppress the story, and I'm not sure if there was a stick to ensure that they'd do it.
A government official can block you. The office of government official cannot block you. As a general rule, objects in the Constitution (such as a press, personal things and affects etc) are understood to be defined by their function not by their form. Eg, 4th Amendment protection extends to your private correspondences via phone call despite no paper correspondence being present. Yes your hypothetical Facebook blocking situation is explicitly in the Constitution so long as you accept Facebook is a printing-press-by-way-of-function. If you refuse this minimal fair rule of interpretation, the Constitution is hopelessly stuck in the late 1700s.
No it isn't. The FBI said "hey heads up there is likely to be a lot of interference and misinformation for this election" and then considerably later facebook goes "hey this story looks like it fits the pattern the FBI told us about" and took independent action.
The FBI has too much coercive power to ever merely “warn”. Everything they say necessarily has a second implied meaning, and any large company understands that.
It's not considered a 4th amendment violation for a cop to ask to search your house without a warrant. It's only unconstitutional if you say "No" and they do it anyway. If the FBI talked to Facebook but there was no coercion, I'm not sure what the 1st amendment violation would be. Although it's still something worth being concerned about (e.g. what else is being censored by FB? What if there's unofficial coercion? Should FB tell users who are being semi-censored?)
Yep the FBI should not be communicating with FB regarding what to suppress and not suppress --that would be outright "Censorship Office" kind of stuff, unless the information is regulated in some way (i.e. illegal doxxing, state secrets, etc)
They didn't do that here, though. Please read the article–the FBI talked to Facebook prior to Rudy's disinformation campaign around the laptop, and Facebook realized it (correctly) had the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign, and chose not to amplify its reach (they didn't ban the story entirely).
Interesting citation on Qwest. Does anyone remember what happened to Nacchio & the top brass shortly after the revelations? Convicted of insider trading, for crimes every other Baby Bell participated in, all the way back to the founding of American Telephone & Telegraph.
Another selective enforcement example; anyone remember when Fife Symington took the National Guard to the Grand Canyon during the federal shutdown? Convicted of accounting malfeasance, for practices that every developer in the modern world uses to pay the bills between project payments.
Trump, well let's agree he's no angel, but he is the primary focus of the latest vendetta from the deep state. Anyone who harms or endangers the deep state will be subjected to this kind of attack. No conspiracy theories, required.
> How are actions like this not a violation of the first amendment to the US constitution? The Federal Government suppressing speech.
The First Amendment prevents Congress from passing laws abridging freedom of speech, press and assembly, or creating a state religion. That's all it does.
The government, in this case, simply made a general suggestion about policy to Facebook, which they chose to act upon of their own accord. That's perfectly legal. Scummy, perhaps, but not a First Amendment violation (unless of course SCOTUS were to decide otherwise.)
What's the difference, in practice, between passing laws (de jure) and the de facto alternative? Obviously there is a technical difference, but if the result can in some cases be the same, where have we arrived at?
The difference to me is in the nature of coercion and interaction between law enforcement and Facebook. Was Facebook given general guidance and warning about the likelihood of misinformation, which they chose to act upon, and could otherwise have chosen not to act upon? Or were they given direct orders to sink this specific story under threat of violence or sanction?
No, no it does not. It prevents the government from taking those actions just as much, it's just harder to prove that the government took that action when it's not official policy. But it absolutely can be held that individual actions were in violation of our bill of rights or our natural rights - See cases like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_v._United_States_(2014) where there was no law nor policy - Just an individual officer's action that violated someone's rights.
The FBI telling Facebook "This is False Information, Censor it" absolutely violates many peoples first amendment rights by way of Tortious interference.
> The FBI telling Facebook "This is False Information, Censor it" absolutely violates many peoples first amendment rights by way of Tortious interference.
But that isn't what happened, according to the article. So even if you're correct, it doesn't apply in this case.
Where is the Justice Department's investigation?
It seems like egregious overstepping. Remember when Qwest refused the FBI requests to phone data and we all hailed them for sticking to principles when ATT and the rest just said "yessirs!"