It really shouldn’t matter what your political persuasion is, if you’re an American who appreciates the 1st Amendment right of free speech, you should be outraged by the banning of Paul Joseph Watson (along with a few others).
Social Media companies, Facebook and Instagram, essentially un-personed him yesterday by removing him from their platforms. Ostensibly under the guise of “hate speech”, he was thrown into the category of “dangerous individuals and organizations”, a category that includes people and organizations, presumably, advocating for terrorism and such, and removed. Poof. This is absolutely ridiculous. Paul Joseph Watson is not a “dangerous individual”, even by FB standards, or a terrorist, nor is he an advocate for violence. Paul is “dangerous” because he is an influential Internet figure, with a large following, who effectively argues against certain popular leftist philosophies.
Seemingly the only real issue is that Paul Joseph Watson is associated with Alex Jones and Infowars. The egregious thing about all of this is that you and I can being banned, censored, suspended, or have content removed that doesn’t comport with Facebook’s policy.
From The Atlantic:
“Infowars is subject to the strictest ban. Facebook and Instagram will remove any content containing Infowars videos, radio segments, or articles (unless the post is explicitly condemning the content), and Facebook will also remove any groups set up to share Infowars content and events promoting any of the banned extremist figures, according to a company spokesperson. (Twitter, YouTube, and Apple have also banned Jones and Infowars.)”
Now, I can make a whole other post about the “Facebook is a company and they can do whatever they want.” Yes, that’s true, but the real problem is who gets to decide what is and isn’t acceptable? Facebook, Instagram, et al want to have their cake and eat it too. Advertising their platforms as “open”, yet retaining extensive editorial control over content. You and I will be disciplined if we share anything the company doesn’t like. Sounds rather authoritarian to me and creates a needless adversarial relationship with the user base.
When a company exercises it’s editorial control over it’s “open platform” to the point of deplatforming, down ranking, hiding, shadow banning, so that only what’s acceptable to the company remains, the platform is no longer open. The Social Media companies have now claimed moral authority over content and that seems to make them publishers rather than platforms. When will your content become subject to editorializing? When will your content become “dangerous”? When will you become persona non grata on the platform?
The sad thing is while companies do have the freedom to do what they want (unless it’s baking a cake or taking wedding pictures), the social media platforms should be jealously guarding 1st amendment principles for speech on their platform, much like Gab. If it’s covered by the 1st amendment, they should let it go. Is Alex Jones an outrageous conspiracy theorist? Sure, but who really cares? Let him publish his stuff, keep advertisers off his page that don’t want to be associated with him, and let others publish debunking and counter factual information in refutation. Is Louis Farrakahn an anti-semite? Yes, and most of us have known this for longer than Facebook has even been a company. Let him publish his vile opinions as long as it comports with the 1st amendment. Let other people publish counter speech that denounces him and other’s like him.
The world is full of “dangerous” ideas and ideologies and the only good way to combat them is to develop and maintain a robust platform of free speech where these ideas and ideologies are analyzed, dissected and debated. Social Media companies need to quit playing the role of Thought Police and Feelings Protector, and let adults fight the war of ideas online within the bounds of the 1st amendment without corporate overlord interference.