This is Not Censorship
GOP Hatred of Big Tech is blurring the lines of what is and is not censorship
Censorship is a very strong word. Webster’s defines censorship as “the institution, system, or practice of censoring” or “the actions or practices of censors.” Censorship, naturally, is banned in the U.S. thanks to the 1st Amendment to our Constitution.
Typically, it has been Republicans who have been the most vigorous defenders of free speech in our nation. They have opposed the reinstitution of the Fairness Doctrine, which required holders of broadcast licenses to “present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was—in the FCC's view—honest, equitable, and balanced.” It has always been Democrats who have wanted to reinstitute the policy, usually thanks to the conservative lean of talk radio, Fox News, and Sinclair Broadcasting.
That’s what makes it so obnoxious that Republicans have adopted a ridiculous argument regarding certain practices of Twitter as it relates to censorship. Here is a member of Congress who is spreading this theory.
The same here with the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Anybody with a basic understanding of censorship knows that this is not censorship.
Twitter is not a state actor. Twitter is a private company and provides a free service that they can regulate to use for their own purposes.
Using Twitter means that you are accepting the Terms of Service instituted by Twitter.
Twitter is obviously, from the screenshots and the video shared above, “censoring” data. What they are asking Twitter users to do is actually click the link before sharing a story and opining on it. And even then, nobody is being forced to open the link before they retweet it; just asking them That seems like a fantastic idea and would make an excellent shirt or sticker.
The fact that Republican elected officials are calling this censorship is patently absurd and a bastardization of the meaning of the word censorship. There are people in this world who are suffering from real censorship. The people in Hong Kong probably don’t look too kindly upon calling this “censorship.”
If Twitter wants to force people to think before retweeting something, that is their right to do it. Frankly, it would probably be better if they asked this question all of the time. One of the worst parts about Twitter (and Facebook) and modern politics is that the fact that stories get shared and spread across social media like wildfire without people reading the damn story.
To paraphrase what my friend Greg Kline wrote in his last piece over at Red Maryland:
The world now is dominated by social media. Worse, the media landscape is dominated by click-bait media preaching to the choir with every incentive rewarding “owning” the other side and completely devaluing any real engagement or attempt to persuade….. It’s soul sucking trying to put the mental energy into engaging in a marketplace of ideas when more and more of our readership likes the title and never reads the post…….
What’s the point…….if people aren’t even going to invest the time to click a link and read an article?
The lack of reading and context is how bonkers conspiracy theories get spread. Here’s the lifecycle of a viral social media story.
Post with provocative title hits the internet:
Content creator posts link to social media;
Social media users see headline and begin sharing the story;
Somebody tags social media “influencers” to start sharing and retweeting the story;
Major blogs, news sites, and podcasts pick up the story and share and write their own posts about the stories without providing any original context or analysis.
The worst part is that as we have seen in recent years, there is a 50/50 chance that within a week or less the original post is debunked or found to not say what everybody ever says it was, while the people who promote the story never said “whoops.”
How is that healthy for an informed electorate? How is that healthy for the sanity of social media users?
What all of this really relates to is the establishment Republican sentiment that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should be expanded to include social media companies. That means government regulation of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media groups. The juxtaposition that these Republicans are decrying censorship while simultaneously trying to expand government control over these sites is stark. But establishment Republicans hate social media companies, hate Silicon Valley, and they want to stick it to them, because establishment Republican politics is now more concerned with “owning the libs” than principled and competent governance.
But to loop back around to the idea of censorship; this is not censorship. There is nothing about this that is censorship. There is nothing about this that isn’t insulting to those who are suffering real censorship. And Republicans, especially elected officials, owe it to the voters to be honest about this stuff.
We’re better than this.