The Parler Injustice
Even EFF, usually a bastion of online freedom of speech seems to see nothing wrong with the treatment of Parler social media in the last few days. See this article for instance.
So even EFF seems no longer unambiguously about freedom of communication on the internet. This and other articles speak of a private companies right to curate content. There are a couple of questionable underlying assumptions in this. The first is that a social media site somehow owns the content created by communities and individuals attempting to communicate to other people and communities that may be interested in what they have to say. The question that is being ignored is to what extent a major communication platform should be more of a common carrier rather than being held to be responsible for everything that is communicated over or on it. Indeed this question is being pushed more and more to the forefront every day. And usually EFF comes down solidly against the major chilling that would occur if all the communication platforms were liable for all content communicated over them. Where does it lead to assume they are? Does your ISP and even major trunk lines become responsible for all content?
Another problematic assumption is that these decisions are only made freely by individual companies. The FAANG companies in particular have been under increasing scrutiny and legal threats from the government. Does anyone really believe that in that environment government officials have no power to extort the silencing or de-platforming of those they do not like or find troublesome?
Lastly where is normal justice and an examinable testable procedure before doing harm to individuals, companies or platforms? Usually before my property can be seized there needs be some legal process of formal charges and some ability to answer those charges and often a trial. While I grant that with civil forfeiture and such we have long departed from this. the principle of what is and is not just should still apply. Today with the Parler actions including yanking their web services there was none of this. There wasn’t even a lot of discussion in social media about whether something should be done. Instead because people were upset by an out of control demonstration in DC that on the larger scale was hardly as violent or scary as many others we have seen in the past year of a handful of those that believe the election was somehow stolen and given that some people on Parler believe this and may advocate somehow reversing it or major marches that might become violent that somehow Parler itself is guilty of these actions. Parler like all social media sites contains a great number of all kinds of opinions and things people find interesting to post. It was not at all obvious as being a main instigator or even charged as such even if you buy some sort of responsibility for all content. So on the basis of an upsetting event by some people that have these opinions about elections that acted illegally all people that question the election or seek to find what can be done are condemned and any platform on which they can communicate? It is a grand guilt by association. And within a week of the event in question the social media site’s mobile apps are taken down and their web services removed.
If you don’t finds this chilling then I don’t think you are paying good attention. I think you will be quite unhappy when it happens to you or some cause that you care about or a platform you are highly invested in. I think you will care a lot when you find you can’t risk saying what you think as you may be booted from anywhere many people might hear you if anyone feels uncomfortable with what you have to say. Does that sound like a happy place to you?
Originally published at https://freedomalways.net on January 10, 2021.
