Social Networks from spaces of freedom to new censors: they have bowed to pressure from the left and traditional media
You may have noticed that, on Facebook , every post Trump sends online, or what Trump says about the election, is posted with a comment. This comment often leads to further information, on sites that are almost always hostile to Trump, with the intent to disprove his statements. In other cases, Facebook feels obliged to specify that "elections in the United States are historically free and fair", a statement that is not true (even in the election of Kennedy in 1960 fraud was contested) taken from the bipartisan think tank Policy Center . On Twitter , however, these comments are seen less: the posts of Trump or those who support him are simply removed.
But woe to say that social networks are biased. Born as real virtual message boards, where you can freely attach images, news, personal thoughts, social networks have become, in the space of just one decade, the backbone of online information. If you are not there, you do not exist. How is it possible that virtual bulletin boards have become politicized media (obviously left-wing, like all mainstream media)? The New York Times tells us the story of what happened in the Facebook staff, with the same tones used to tell a fairy tale with a happy ending. Once upon a time there was a happy company but it began to live in dark times. Times when more and more employees began to feel that what they were doing was wrong, it did not improve the world but made it worse. The skilled analysts within the company discovered to their utter horror that the “bad for the world” news prevailed over the “good for the world”. And then they wondered: what if we found a way to hide the bad news? The test went well. But the sad employees continued to complain that not enough was being done to counteract the information, as false and biased as ever, by the Ogre (i.e. Donald Trump). And at one point, the employees crossed their arms, on strike. Even in this case, then, the wise analysts tested a new algorithm and all the news coming from the Orc became invisible.
Unfortunately the world is not a fairy tale and the Ogre is a democratically elected president in 2016, who still in 2020 obtained more than 70 million votes. What media professionals don't even take into consideration is that there are different opinions in elections. On the contrary, they consider that there is only one truth and that what does not conform to it is "false", or worse, "bad news for the world". Social networks , from opportunities to express oneself freely, have become censors. What's worse: they are proud of their censorship.
Let it be clear that, in this whole affair, social networks , however rich and powerful they may seem, are the earthenware pot among the iron ones. The iron vessels are the traditional media and above all politics. It is a political apparatus that has bent social networks to its will, forcing them to change the rules. It did not do so with the police and state censorship, as happens in right and left dictatorships, but with the threat of the crossfire of screaming squares, organized boycotts and social stigma. Social networks have always been considered oases of freedom, until Donald Trump won in 2016. Traditional publishers wondered where all those votes came from, considering they were united (including Murdoch, of Fox ) on Hillary Clinton's side and against Donald Trump. The answer was immediate: because people are still free to talk on Facebook and Twitter . Then the psychosis of fake news , Russian propaganda and big data was born , collected to send personalized propaganda on social media to the voters. Here too: as long as the trawling of data was used by Obama, in his 2012 election campaign, his was " innovation ". But when Trump used the same methods, then the Cambridge Analytica scandal began. Facebook , for having lent itself to the game, was immediately put on trial.
Against Twitter , guilty of being used by Trump to communicate his policy, against Facebook , guilty of never checking fake news enough (of Trump and his supporters), four years of controversy, traditional media reproach and periodic boycotts . Back in 2020, in a February article in Fortune (just to give a clear example, but the mainstream was all that), a columnist complained that Twitter had not yet done enough to report or censor fake news . In a very significant passage, we read:
“The problem is that the average Twitter user may not even believe in the extremely strict verification process of the New York Times . In fact, a 2019 Gallup poll shows that only 41 percent of Americans trust the media in general "
The intent was very clear: to force social networks to align themselves with the standards (including political ones) of a liberal newspaper, at the cost of going against the opinion of readers and users.
Covid-19 , with the "need" to censor false information on the pandemic and medical treatment, was the dress rehearsal. Governments with emergency powers can also impose censorship on social networks , by obscuring "fake news" . But the definitive opportunity to break social networks came with Black Lives Matter's anti-racism campaign, from the end of May. In that case, the multinationals close to the democratic cause (that is: all those who want to survive on the market, without fear of boycotts in turn) have launched their cultural revolution: adherence to an "anti-racist" language, under penalty of a boycott. In June, Facebook, which had stood firm until the beginning of the summer, defended freedom of expression, folded. The blow came on June 26, when Unilever , with its entire group, announced the suspension of advertising on Facebook on American soil. While it was there, the multinational also involved Twitter , which was still considered too light in its controls. "Given the current political polarization and upcoming elections in the United States, much more effort is needed against the language of hate," said Luis Di Como, Unilever's vice president of communications. As soon as the news broke, the two victims of the boycott, both Facebook and Twitter had recorded heavy losses on the stock market: Facebook lost 8 percent and Twitter 7 percent. Unilever was just the icing on the cake. Before it, other large companies such as Verizon Communications , Patagonia , VF , North Face , Eddie Bauer and Recreational Equipment had already announced the boycott. Coca Cola then went further, announcing a stop to its advertising on all American social networks for at least a month: no more commercials of the most famous drink in the world on Facebook , Twitter , YouTube , Snap , because "there is no space for racism in the world and there is no room for racism on social media ”.
Result: social networks have folded. They agreed to select news, like any online publisher does. But now they risk paying for this last choice as well. In the last two Congressional hearings, Facebook and Twitter CEOs literally found themselves between two fires, with Democrats accusing them of not doing enough against Trump and Republicans accusing them, rightly, of censoring one side of the political scene. American. The Republicans do not have the weapons that the Democrats have at their disposal: they do not have control of the square and do not know how to organize boycotts on a national and international scale. But they have enough legislators to change the laws: so far social networks , precisely because they are not publishers, but mere virtual "message boards", are exempt from responsibility for what they publish, thanks to paragraph 230 of the US publishing law. If the immunity given by paragraph 230 goes off (and Republicans have every intention of blowing it off) social media will be responsible for every single word or image they post, just like a publisher. At this point it is also normal that this is the case: if you select the contents, you are also directly responsible for it. But we will all be the losers, because, obviously, social media will behave like publishers with us too. An article like this you are reading would never be published by a leftist editor. And not even what you think when you wake up in the morning, maybe. We will all have much less freedom to express ourselves, because because of someone, no more credit will be given to anyone.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/social-network-da-spazi-di-liberta-a-nuovi-censori-si-sono-piegati-alle-pressioni-della-sinistra-e-dei-media-tradizionali/ on Mon, 30 Nov 2020 04:59:00 +0000.