[NCAC] PRIVATE CENSORSHIP – FIGHTING SUPPRESSION OF SPEECH BY NON-GOVERNMENTAL ACTORS

this is pretty much a threefer!!! bonus for the D&D

posted in the Nobody-Cares-About-Hunter-Biden thread, but deserves to be here as well

Censorship by Surrogate: Why Musk’s Document Dump Could be a Game Changer

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/12/...-musks-document-dump-could-be-a-game-changer/

 

From Shadow Bans to Black Lists, Musk Forces a Free-Speech Reckoning for Politicians and Pundits
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/12/...speech-reckoning-for-politicians-and-pundits/

excerpt:

Censorship apologists are running out of room for evasion. They first insisted that Twitter was not censoring disfavored views and then said that claims of secret throttling or shadow banning were “conspiracy theories.” They then insisted that there was no evidence of meetings with the FBI or other agencies.
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more at the link

 

the NY Post speaks

https://nypost.com/2022/12/16/liber...er-censorship-because-theyre-the-ones-banned/

Liberal journalists suddenly care about Twitter censorship — because they’re the ones banned!
By Post Editorial Board
December 16, 2022 6:46pm

“Twitter’s suspension of several journalists last night was unprecedented,” the Axios newsletter said Friday. “There’s never been an attempt by a major social media platform to suspend so many journalists all at once.”

Axios must have gone to the Jennifer Lawrence school of “there’s never been a female action lead before me,” because that’s just baloney.

Remember when Twitter banned an entire newspaper — this one?

That happened two years ago, and the response of the rest of the media at the time was “aw, too bad, anyway . . .” The New York Times called it a “misinformation test,” even though our coverage of Hunter Biden was 100% accurate.

Flash forward two years and most of the press, including the Times, completely ignore The Twitter Files, which detailed how the social media company arbitrarily, and in many cases wrongly, censored and banned conservatives. Not a story, they say.

Then Thursday. Elon Musk bans some journalists from Twitter for sharing the location of his private jet. The media LOSE THEIR MINDS.

Suddenly, statements fly about how terrible this is for a free press, how dangerous for Democracy, how vital the media are. It’s a crisis!

Look, we believe strongly in a free press. And even though it’s a private company, Twitter has taken the role of public square; we think it should only ban accounts in extraordinary circumstances. Furthermore, these reporters weren’t “doxxing” Musk, they shared or referenced publicly available data, collected and released by the FAA. So we say give ’em back their accounts.

But these whining journalists would garner a bit more sympathy if they had complained as vociferously about the collusion between Twitter and the FBI as they did about liberal writers getting the hook. Free speech is as important when a New York Times reporter speaks her mind as it does when @randomguy13 does.

Perhaps the Twitter Files are worth another look, fellow members of the press, to see what other suppression the social-media company might have been up to. Perhaps you’ll pay attention the next time a conservative publication is deplatformed, and actually report whether that suspension was fair or not.

Maybe you’ll even Tweet about it. We’d love to read it.
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bump for relevance

@Sweet Lou 4 2

 

seems I missed this the first time around. at least in Trump's case, the Twitter Files demonstrate he did NOT violate the terms of service

 

“'There’s a real confusion about freedom of speech as a cultural value and freedom of speech as a legal concept,' said Will Creeley, the legal director of Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech advocacy group."

At Berkeley Law, a Debate Over Zionism, Free Speech and Campus Ideals
A student group, Law Students for Justice in Palestine, barred supporters of Zionism from speaking at its events. The outrage — and legal misunderstandings — grew from there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/us/uc-berkeley-free-speech.html

excerpt:

The controversy, pushed along online by conservative commentators, hits two of the pressure points in campus politics today. The bylaw was adopted as antisemitism is rising across the country. And some critics of academia have cast left-wing students as censors who shout down other viewpoints, all but strangling, they say, honest intellectual debate.

That collision of issues all but guaranteed a tense debate over free speech, even if a broad swath of speech experts say that student groups are allowed to ban speakers whose views they disagree with.

“A student group has the right to choose the speakers they invite on the basis of viewpoint,” said Mr. Chemerinsky, who is Jewish and a Zionist. “Jewish law students don’t have to invite a Holocaust denier. Black students don’t have to invite white supremacists. If the women’s law association is putting out a program on abortion rights, they can invite only those who believe in abortion rights.”

Mr. Chemerinsky said that excluding speakers based on race, religion, sex or sexual orientation would not be allowed, but he noted that the student groups were excluding speakers based on viewpoint. True, he said, many Jews view Zionism as integral to their identity, but such deep passions do not change the law.

Other legal experts noted that the controversy showed just how mangled the understanding of the First Amendment had become, even at a place like Berkeley, the epicenter of the 1960s free-speech movement. The debate, they said, should focus on whether these bans align with the academic ideal of open, intellectual debate. Even if student groups can prohibit speakers, should they? And should such bans be codified — formally adopted with a bylaw?

“There’s a real confusion about freedom of speech as a cultural value and freedom of speech as a legal concept,” said Will Creeley, the legal director of Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech advocacy group.
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more at the link

 

fair enough

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cant-b...-covid-11671629259?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s

Can’t Both Sides Back Free Speech?
Turnabout may be fair play, but it would be fairer if left and right respected each other’s rights.
By Ted Rall
Dec. 21, 2022 5:08 pm ET

Almost everyone supports free speech in principle. A January 2022 Knight Foundation/Ipsos poll found that 91% of Americans think free expression is an essential part of democracy. But most of us find it easier to make exceptions for speech we disagree with.

Elon Musk prompted loud complaints of censorship after he suspended the accounts of journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and other outlets. Conservatives pointed out that the same media organizations were silent or approving when Twitter banned a New York Post story about Hunter Biden. “What is funny to me is that so many of those who did know and didn’t care about it when it happened to the right, really do care now,” said talk-radio host Erick Erickson. “They only care when it happens to their side.”

Twitter and other social-media companies have deplatformed numerous figures on the right, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, InfoWars host Alex Jones and of course Donald Trump—as well as such Trump advisers as Roger Stone and Steve Bannon. Twitter has used algorithms to shadow-ban conservatives, and tens of thousands of anti-vaxxers and QAnon adherents lost their Twitter accounts. Documents released by Mr. Musk show that Twitter executives worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to censor jokes about the 2020 election under the guise of combating “misinformation.”

You can’t remain silent while others are getting censored, and then expect sympathy when it happens to you. But that’s what liberal-leaning media organizations are doing.

Had I written this essay at another time—say, the peak of nationalist hysteria that followed 9/11—I could have constructed the narrative in reverse. Left-wing critics of George W. Bush’s administration were censored and fired from their jobs while conservatives looked the other way or expressed approval. Some of the liberals who chuckled to themselves as Mr. Trump and his supporters were memory-holed might have been influenced by residual schadenfreude.

The aforementioned poll showcases Americans’ tendency to see the suppression of speech through a political lens. Only 56% of Republicans said the First Amendment should protect Black Lives Matters protesters vs. 85% of Democrats. Conversely, 44% of Republicans said that it should be OK to express false statements about Covid-19 and vaccines, compared with 20% of Democrats.

I’m a leftie who’s been vaccinated six times. But I support free speech, so I don’t think social or traditional media ought to quash anti-vaxxers. I publicly opposed campaigns to boycott Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers and cancel Ann Coulter, who has said nasty things about me. The only thing more dangerous than nutty cults like QAnon is censoring nutty cults like QAnon and pushing them underground.

It’s like nuclear disarmament—someone has to go first if the censor-the-right-now-censor-the-left ping-pong match is to be resolved in favor of open dialogue. Some high-minded Republicans criticized Mr. Musk’s attacks on liberal reporters. A few fair-minded Democrats, including Rep. Ro Khanna of California, have opposed censorship of conservatives. Left and right could find common ground if they resolved to stand up for each other’s right to speak freely.

Mr. Rall is a political cartoonist, columnist and author, most recently, of “The Stringer.”
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WaPo wakes up

Shadowbanning is real: Here’s how you end up muted by social media
Elon Musk is right: Social media should tell you when you’re shadowbanned

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/27/shadowban/

excerpt:

Art teacher Jennifer Bloomer has used Instagram to share activism-themed artwork and announce classes for eight years. Then last fall, while trying to promote a class called “Raising anti-racist kids through art,” her online megaphone stopped working.

It’s not that her account got suspended. Rather, she started to notice her likes dwindled and the number of people seeing her posts dropped by as much as 90 percent, according to her Instagram dashboard.

Bloomer, it appears, had been “shadowbanned,” a form of online censorship where you’re still allowed to speak, but hardly anyone gets to hear you. Even more maddening, no one tells you it’s happening.

“It felt like I was being punished,” says Bloomer, 42, whose Radici Studios in Berkeley, Calif., struggled with how to sign up students without reaching them through Instagram. “Is the word anti-racist not okay with Instagram?”

She never got answers. Nor have countless other people who’ve experienced shadowbans on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube and other forms of social media.

Like Bloomer, you might have been shadowbanned if one of these companies has deemed what you post problematic, but not enough to ban you. There are signs, but rarely proof — that’s what makes it shadowy. You might notice a sudden drop in likes and replies, your Facebook group appears less in members’ feeds or your name no longer shows in the search box. The practice made headlines this month when Twitter owner Elon Musk released evidence intended to show shadowbanning was being used to suppress conservative views.

Two decades into the social media revolution, it’s now clear that moderating content is important to keep people safe and conversation civil. But we the users want our digital public squares to use moderation techniques that are transparent and give us a fair shot at being heard. Musk’s exposé may have cherry-picked examples to cast conservatives as victims, but he is right about this much: Companies need to tell us exactly when and why they’re suppressing our megaphones, and give us tools to appeal the decision.

The question is, how do you do that in an era in which invisible algorithms now decide which voices to amplify and which to reduce?

First we have to agree that shadowbanning exists. Even victims are filled with self-doubt bordering on paranoia: How can you know if a post isn’t getting shared because it’s been shadowbanned or because it isn’t very good? When Black Lives Matters activists accused TikTok of shadowbanning during the George Floyd protests, TikTok said it was a glitch. As recently as 2020, Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri, said shadowbanning was “not a thing” on his social network, though he appeared to be using a historical definition of selectively choosing accounts to mute.

Shadowbanning is real. While the term may be imprecise and sometimes misused, most social media companies now employ moderation techniques that limit people’s megaphones without telling them, including suppressing what companies call “borderline” content.

And even though it’s a popular Republican talking point, it has a much wider impact. A recent survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) found nearly 1 in 10 Americans on social media suspect they’ve been shadowbanned. When I asked about it on Instagram, I heard from people whose main offense appeared to be living or working on the margins of society: Black creators, sex educators, fat activists and drag performers. “There is this looming threat of being invisible,” says Brooke Erin Duffy, a professor at Cornell University who studies social media.

Social media companies are also starting to acknowledge it, though they prefer to use terms such as “deamplification” and “reducing reach.” On Dec. 7, Instagram unveiled a new feature called Account Status that lets its professional users know when their content had been deemed “not eligible” to be recommended to other users and appeal. “We want people to understand the reach their content gets,” says Claire Lerner, a spokeswoman for Facebook and Instagram parent Meta.

It’s a very good, and very late, step in the right direction. Unraveling what happened to Bloomer, the art teacher, helped me see how we can have a more productive understanding of shadowbanning — and also points to some ways we could hold tech companies accountable for how they do it.
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more at the link

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NOW they tell us this