At the risk of repeating an old and tired quip (but, seemingly, a necessary one these days):
Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, not a how-to guide.
I think at this point the only way to disempower Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is to simply remove their product from the shelves. And since that product is us, it’s in our power to do that.
I’m an author (a sometimes-bestselling-author, a sometimes-meh-kind-of-author). I closed down all my social media accounts in September 2020, and guess what? Nothing bad happened. I still talk to people. I still see pictures of their silly pets. I still support them and argue with them and share a laugh with them. Also, I still sell the occasional book.
1.) FaceBook and Twitter should be regulated by the FCC, and fined extremely aggressively if they censor without a court order. 2.) Repeal Section 230, so that if they ‘print’ anything illegal or libelous they can be taken to court.
It’s not Facebook. It’s us (or, at least, many of “us”) who are demanding a low-risk, highly-sanitised daily feed at the trough. Facebook et al have become the rose-tinted spectacles through which we view the (brave new) world.
I am not usually smarter than the average bear, but have never had a “social media” account. Years ago, when I first saw Facebook, I couldn’t see how it would improve anyone’s life and now realise that it actually worsens many. My wife looks at it to see photos of grandchildren in foreign parts, but her profile is totally fictitious and we use Facebookpurity and Adblock to stop most of its garbage. Cleggie works for them so that should be enough to warn thinking folk off….
SD
Simon Denis
3 years ago
The whole notion of “protecting people from misinformation” is a totalitarian ruse. Individuals should be allowed to make up their own minds. It is not as if there are so few sources of news that they can’t make comparisons. Yes, people should certainly be shielded from deceitful propaganda; but propaganda differs from mere “misinformation” in a number of obvious ways. First, it is relentless. Second, it rarely stoops to argument. Third, it monopolises the media and finally it prevents, distorts and criminalises dissent. None of these criteria apply to Mr Birrell’s piece; in fact, they apply to the causes of which Big Tech approves. It is not a case of the “pot calling the kettle black”; more a case of the pot declaring indignantly that the snow is black. And it’s about time that the pot in question were consigned to the rubbish tip.
Yes. What they truly want IS to be able to use it entirely as propaganda. It goes like every other media: newspapers, radio, TV, now the internet. Any place where people find some freedom will be targeted for government control.
SD
Saul D
3 years ago
So here we are in the 2020s and the world has glorified advertising companies in control of free speech…
We’re due for a Punk revival…
SL
Swiveleyed Loon
3 years ago
It’s over. That exciting experiment of universal suffrage combined with free speech has suddenly and without warning passed into the history books.
And any pre-2020 immunology text book mentioning herd immunity.
JF
Joe Francis
3 years ago
Once you see the words “independent fact checkers”, you know you’re about to get hosed.
RL
Richard Lustemberg
3 years ago
The WHO sent a team composed of it’s most corrupt insiders to investigate the possible Wuhan leak. Among them, Marion Koopmans, who also put her signature to the Drösten paper, the foundation for the PCR tests used throughout the world.
CJ
Chris Jayne
3 years ago
Thanks for highlighting this Freddie. It is tech, but it isn’t just tech.
Much of the media, big corporates via HR, education, much of the public sector, plus supra-national political bodies. They have decided that their view of the world is the truth.
FB
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Evil, but not unexpected, because the tech giants have been doing stuff like this for some time. Meanwhile, most of the politicians seem to be years behind the curve, or actually supportive of this informational and mind control.
Modern politicians fall into four categories: mindless authoritarians – Hancock, Patel; collaborators who know it’s wrong – Johnson and Mogg; doubtful, confused babble merchants – the vast majority of MPs and courageous, old-style leaders – Brady, Redwood and a few more. The last group has almost no influence at all.
I’m not sure what this has to do with the behaviour of the tech giants.
And given your very negative view of the politicians, which may be fair enough, the temptations of power being, well, very tempting, your faith in Rees Mogg is almost touchingly naive. Where is the great libertarian rebellion from him? – he is an outright supporter of the government.
KE
Katharine Eyre
3 years ago
Well done for calling this out. A worrying sign indeed. To me, what FB is doing in this case seems vastly more dangerous than allowing a few crazies to talk nonsense and letting their audience make up their own minds.
AL
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Private companies may not owe you anything. That doesn’t mean their actions can’t be bad for free speech. Free speech is more than a legal principle. It needs to be a broadly held social value for it to matter.
It’s not FB’s job to be the hall monitor. Nor is it the role of private enterprise to be the outsourcing provider of things govt cannot legally do – like silence critics, opponents, and heretics.
Ummmm, “Never forget that the repulsive Nick Clegg has a well rewarded job with the equally repulsive organisation that is Fb”. There, fixed it.
JS
JR Stoker
3 years ago
Is not the answer simply to accept that Facebook and all the others are publishers, not “platforms”? They prove it time and time again by the degree of control.over what they consider “fit to print”. Then they can be subject to the law regarding publishing, including libel.
GM
G Matthews
3 years ago
The only surprise is that Freddy seems surprised by this. Guys, unless you want Nick Clegg determining what you can and can’t think then you need to deactivate all Facebook, Insta and What’sApp, also Twitter, now. Oh and cancel your TV license while you are there.
DS
David Simpson
3 years ago
It is both incredible and truly frightening that a perfectly respectable piece of journalism, which I read and commented on, should have been treated in this way. I cannot believe that there is no legal remedy (the European Court of Human Rights?) that can be applied against FB.
PG
Paul Goodman
3 years ago
Amazing how they contrive to cancel any considered alternative view and yet allow the most obvious drivel to thrive unabated. Nevertheless the notion of having a twitter or facebook account at all is equally bonkers. Why would you?
Mark Zuckerberg should change his name forthwith to Suckerberg, for that is what he is, if not even worse.
AH
Alka Hughes-Hallett
3 years ago
Very interestingly , today I read that BBC’s licence has been refused renewal in China for reporting on Uighurs. Facebook is already banned in China.
I think the problem here is is not that these platforms have a special left or China leaning but that they have their own moral code of sorts. Truth can be complicated and fair reporting has to put two views forward so that an impartial and balanced ideas can emerge from it. Cancelling and blanking ideas is a poor form of reporting. No good can come out of it in the long run.
DM
4davidmm
3 years ago
The correct response is that every newspaper in this country should print the article. So in this globalist utopia we have US government / US tech telling us what we can and cannot read about a World body reporting on the origin of a virus that threatens us all. Who’d have thought it?
PK
Peter KE
3 years ago
FB the face of evil, the world would be better without it.
AH
Andrew Harvey
3 years ago
Call me naive, but I feel like Facebook has really crossed a line here.
VP
voodoopolitics
3 years ago
The link is working in the US.
PS
pgstokes1
3 years ago
What a world
AB
Andrew Baldwin
3 years ago
I left a comment on Ian’s post, saying it was good, but he pulled his punches. Perhaps he deliberately pulled his punches to avoid the Big Tech goons censoring him, to no avail. It seems that Mark Steyn is right. It’s China’s world, and we just live in it.
JB
Joe Blow
3 years ago
Of course, the censors will only ever censor bad things. Not things that they shouldn’t.
Don’t worry. Clegg says it will be OK.
AK
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Can the author actually be surprised by this behavior? How is that possible?
PF
Peter Fisher
3 years ago
What are you doing on Facebook in the first place? If you truely believe in freedom of speech, democracy, accountability, etc. you would never be on it. What did you expect from a cabal of neo-Marxists when you critique Communists? It’s like sticking your hand into a basket of venomous snakes and then complaining that you got bitten. That’s not fair on the snakes, they serve a useful purpose in the food chain, where as the only purpose of social media is to create division in society.
PD
Peter Dale
3 years ago
Remember Lord Acton: ‘All power tends to corrupt; absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.’ We are seeing this here. The most recent contre-temps with Australia is on point.
I have never been on any of the ‘social’ media platforms and would never dream of doing so.
If anyone wants to understand the business model underlying these oligarchies, read Shoshana Zuboff’s ‘Surveillance Capitalism’. It’s big, but it gives you a full understanding of what drives these companies.
One of the major defences, oddly supported by socialists, is that they are private companies and can do what they want. As a matter of fact, they cannot. They have to comply with government regulations to get listed on the various stock exchanges and they must abide by various laws forbidding discrimination of many sorts. Governments could, if they so wished, legislate to forbid the banning of people who express contrarian ideas. All it takes is political will. And that won’t occur until these companies overstep their reach and offend someone or group really powerful. And then corrective action will happen.
Phil Bolton
3 years ago
Where are the lines of what is acceptable (and not) and who draws them up ? This is the problem. Social media firms don’t want the job but they are in the firing line. Different countries/societies have different Governments and different norms (often driven by religious beliefs) so there is no global acceptance. What is censorship and what is extremist propaganda ? It’s a testing question that we don’t have an answer to.
John McClelland
3 years ago
Allow everything or nothing
Report this comment
This site is registered on wpml.org as a development site. Switch to a production site key to remove this banner.
At the risk of repeating an old and tired quip (but, seemingly, a necessary one these days):
Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, not a how-to guide.
I think at this point the only way to disempower Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is to simply remove their product from the shelves. And since that product is us, it’s in our power to do that.
I’m an author (a sometimes-bestselling-author, a sometimes-meh-kind-of-author). I closed down all my social media accounts in September 2020, and guess what? Nothing bad happened. I still talk to people. I still see pictures of their silly pets. I still support them and argue with them and share a laugh with them. Also, I still sell the occasional book.
We can do this, folks.
Things needed to disempower FB, Twitter etc
Locate Server Housings
Large Missile
Target Lock
Missiles away…
It’s the only way
You’re right – but we should go further.
1.) FaceBook and Twitter should be regulated by the FCC, and fined extremely aggressively if they censor without a court order.
2.) Repeal Section 230, so that if they ‘print’ anything illegal or libelous they can be taken to court.
FaceBook and Twitter are cancers on our society.
I think the second item alone would do the trick. 🙂
I’m out too. Almost 9 months clean.
It’s not Facebook. It’s us (or, at least, many of “us”) who are demanding a low-risk, highly-sanitised daily feed at the trough. Facebook et al have become the rose-tinted spectacles through which we view the (brave new) world.
Excellent advice, thanks.
Oh, and I finally quit FB for good six years ago.
I am not usually smarter than the average bear, but have never had a “social media” account. Years ago, when I first saw Facebook, I couldn’t see how it would improve anyone’s life and now realise that it actually worsens many. My wife looks at it to see photos of grandchildren in foreign parts, but her profile is totally fictitious and we use Facebookpurity and Adblock to stop most of its garbage. Cleggie works for them so that should be enough to warn thinking folk off….
The whole notion of “protecting people from misinformation” is a totalitarian ruse. Individuals should be allowed to make up their own minds. It is not as if there are so few sources of news that they can’t make comparisons. Yes, people should certainly be shielded from deceitful propaganda; but propaganda differs from mere “misinformation” in a number of obvious ways. First, it is relentless. Second, it rarely stoops to argument. Third, it monopolises the media and finally it prevents, distorts and criminalises dissent. None of these criteria apply to Mr Birrell’s piece; in fact, they apply to the causes of which Big Tech approves. It is not a case of the “pot calling the kettle black”; more a case of the pot declaring indignantly that the snow is black. And it’s about time that the pot in question were consigned to the rubbish tip.
Yes. What they truly want IS to be able to use it entirely as propaganda. It goes like every other media: newspapers, radio, TV, now the internet. Any place where people find some freedom will be targeted for government control.
So here we are in the 2020s and the world has glorified advertising companies in control of free speech…
We’re due for a Punk revival…
It’s over. That exciting experiment of universal suffrage combined with free speech has suddenly and without warning passed into the history books.
Next stop, burning history books.
And any pre-2020 immunology text book mentioning herd immunity.
Once you see the words “independent fact checkers”, you know you’re about to get hosed.
The WHO sent a team composed of it’s most corrupt insiders to investigate the possible Wuhan leak. Among them, Marion Koopmans, who also put her signature to the Drösten paper, the foundation for the PCR tests used throughout the world.
Thanks for highlighting this Freddie. It is tech, but it isn’t just tech.
Much of the media, big corporates via HR, education, much of the public sector, plus supra-national political bodies. They have decided that their view of the world is the truth.
Evil, but not unexpected, because the tech giants have been doing stuff like this for some time. Meanwhile, most of the politicians seem to be years behind the curve, or actually supportive of this informational and mind control.
Modern politicians fall into four categories: mindless authoritarians – Hancock, Patel; collaborators who know it’s wrong – Johnson and Mogg; doubtful, confused babble merchants – the vast majority of MPs and courageous, old-style leaders – Brady, Redwood and a few more. The last group has almost no influence at all.
I’m not sure what this has to do with the behaviour of the tech giants.
And given your very negative view of the politicians, which may be fair enough, the temptations of power being, well, very tempting, your faith in Rees Mogg is almost touchingly naive. Where is the great libertarian rebellion from him? – he is an outright supporter of the government.
Well done for calling this out. A worrying sign indeed. To me, what FB is doing in this case seems vastly more dangerous than allowing a few crazies to talk nonsense and letting their audience make up their own minds.
Private companies may not owe you anything. That doesn’t mean their actions can’t be bad for free speech. Free speech is more than a legal principle. It needs to be a broadly held social value for it to matter.
It’s not FB’s job to be the hall monitor. Nor is it the role of private enterprise to be the outsourcing provider of things govt cannot legally do – like silence critics, opponents, and heretics.
FB (and Google and Twitter, etc) should either be a platform or a publisher. It can’t have it both ways.
Never forget that Nick Clegg has a very good job with the repulsive organisation that is Fb.
Ummmm, “Never forget that the repulsive Nick Clegg has a well rewarded job with the equally repulsive organisation that is Fb”. There, fixed it.
Is not the answer simply to accept that Facebook and all the others are publishers, not “platforms”? They prove it time and time again by the degree of control.over what they consider “fit to print”. Then they can be subject to the law regarding publishing, including libel.
The only surprise is that Freddy seems surprised by this. Guys, unless you want Nick Clegg determining what you can and can’t think then you need to deactivate all Facebook, Insta and What’sApp, also Twitter, now. Oh and cancel your TV license while you are there.
It is both incredible and truly frightening that a perfectly respectable piece of journalism, which I read and commented on, should have been treated in this way. I cannot believe that there is no legal remedy (the European Court of Human Rights?) that can be applied against FB.
Amazing how they contrive to cancel any considered alternative view and yet allow the most obvious drivel to thrive unabated. Nevertheless the notion of having a twitter or facebook account at all is equally bonkers. Why would you?
Dont use facebook. They are evil.
I’m almost 9 months clean now.
I’m six years clean.
Mark Zuckerberg should change his name forthwith to Suckerberg, for that is what he is, if not even worse.
Very interestingly , today I read that BBC’s licence has been refused renewal in China for reporting on Uighurs.
Facebook is already banned in China.
I think the problem here is is not that these platforms have a special left or China leaning but that they have their own moral code of sorts.
Truth can be complicated and fair reporting has to put two views forward so that an impartial and balanced ideas can emerge from it.
Cancelling and blanking ideas is a poor form of reporting. No good can come out of it in the long run.
The correct response is that every newspaper in this country should print the article. So in this globalist utopia we have US government / US tech telling us what we can and cannot read about a World body reporting on the origin of a virus that threatens us all. Who’d have thought it?
FB the face of evil, the world would be better without it.
Call me naive, but I feel like Facebook has really crossed a line here.
The link is working in the US.
What a world
I left a comment on Ian’s post, saying it was good, but he pulled his punches. Perhaps he deliberately pulled his punches to avoid the Big Tech goons censoring him, to no avail. It seems that Mark Steyn is right. It’s China’s world, and we just live in it.
Of course, the censors will only ever censor bad things. Not things that they shouldn’t.
Don’t worry. Clegg says it will be OK.
Can the author actually be surprised by this behavior? How is that possible?
What are you doing on Facebook in the first place? If you truely believe in freedom of speech, democracy, accountability, etc. you would never be on it. What did you expect from a cabal of neo-Marxists when you critique Communists? It’s like sticking your hand into a basket of venomous snakes and then complaining that you got bitten. That’s not fair on the snakes, they serve a useful purpose in the food chain, where as the only purpose of social media is to create division in society.
Remember Lord Acton: ‘All power tends to corrupt; absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.’ We are seeing this here. The most recent contre-temps with Australia is on point.
I have never been on any of the ‘social’ media platforms and would never dream of doing so.
If anyone wants to understand the business model underlying these oligarchies, read Shoshana Zuboff’s ‘Surveillance Capitalism’. It’s big, but it gives you a full understanding of what drives these companies.
One of the major defences, oddly supported by socialists, is that they are private companies and can do what they want. As a matter of fact, they cannot. They have to comply with government regulations to get listed on the various stock exchanges and they must abide by various laws forbidding discrimination of many sorts. Governments could, if they so wished, legislate to forbid the banning of people who express contrarian ideas. All it takes is political will. And that won’t occur until these companies overstep their reach and offend someone or group really powerful. And then corrective action will happen.
Where are the lines of what is acceptable (and not) and who draws them up ? This is the problem. Social media firms don’t want the job but they are in the firing line. Different countries/societies have different Governments and different norms (often driven by religious beliefs) so there is no global acceptance. What is censorship and what is extremist propaganda ? It’s a testing question that we don’t have an answer to.
Allow everything or nothing