Imagine if you used your Gmail account to send an email to your grandma describing the damage to your neighborhood caused by “mostly-peaceful protesters”. Imagine further that Google added a disclaimer to your email that said your message may contain inaccurate or misleading information.
Now, let’s say you send a text to your friend saying that wearing masks is stupid. Your friend receives the text, but instead of seeing your text, he receives one saying “Wearing masks is proven to be an effective way to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Click here to read the original message.”
Finally, imagine you’re on your cell phone talking with a friend. You mention that you believe Trump won reelection and Joe Biden cheated. Then your call is dropped and your phone stops working. How would you feel about that?
I’m going to guess that you’d think any of those scenarios would suck. I’d bet that if one of these things happened to you, you’d be quite upset.
Well, it is happening to you.
Those scenarios I asked you to imagine are exactly what’s happening on Social media these days. Facebook and Twitter are reading what you post, and then deciding if what you’re saying needs to be warned against, clarified, put into context or blocked completely.
If you mention election fraud, they may add text saying that voting by mail has “a long history of trustworthiness”. If you post about how you hate wearing masks, they could add a link to information saying that masks have proven to be effective. If you say something found particularly egregious by platform censors, they might suspend your account or drastically reduce the number of people who see your message.
How is Twitter suspending your account any different than Verizon suspending your cell phone account? It isn’t. If it’s alright for Twitter to decide what you can say to your followers, why not let the phone company decide what you can say to your friends? OK. I can already tell some of you will be thinking that listening to our phone calls would be protected by our right to privacy. True, but with the technology available today, a person wouldn’t actually have to listen in on calls. An “algorithm” could be used to review the calls in real time and make the determination of whether the words are safe or unsafe. So, the callers’ privacy would be maintained.
There is no difference between Facebook saying your post is “potentially misleading” and Google fact-checking what you say to your grandma. If you’re OK with Facebook adding disclaimers or “fact-checking” to posts, then you’d also have to be OK with Google fact-checking your emails.
No one should be OK with big tech censoring speech. Everyone should be concerned that voices are being silenced and that 1st Amendment rights are being trampled on. Suspending accounts is the digital equivalent of stopping someone from speaking. Which is illegal.
Currently, with very few exceptions, only Conservative views are being censored. So, if you’re a Liberal, you may be tempted to think that this type of censorship is OK because, right now anyway, it supports your own views. But what if it didn’t?
What most people don’t seem to realize is that platform censorship can easily be turned against them. The platforms can decide that any opinion needs clarification, or a warning or should simply be blocked.
Today it’s my opinion being censored, tomorrow it could be yours. It shouldn’t be hard for anyone to imagine a future where big tech considers your own opinions too dangerous to be allowed.
