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It's not quite that straightforward. What happened according to Zuck (on the JRE podcast) was that the FBI came to FB and said "We believe some kind of Russian
by darawk 4y ago
It's not quite that straightforward. What happened according to Zuck (on the JRE podcast) was that the FBI came to FB and said "We believe some kind of Russian disinformation is about to drop in the next couple of weeks, be on the lookout for that".
When the Hunter Biden laptop story came out, FB reasonably concluded this was what the FBI warned them about, and suppressed it. It's now clear that this story was not "disinformation" in any normal sense, and FB should not have censored it.
Whether or not this rises to the level of a first amendment violation is a tricky question though. It seems to me that in this particular case, both parties simply made a mistake. The FBI was too quick to characterize it as misinformation, and FB was too credulous of the FBI, and didn't do their own investigation.
My opinion is that this isn't quite a first amendment violation, but just an unfortunate series of mistakes. Some of the CDC stuff seems closer to true government coercion though, at least, if you take what the Tablet piece is saying at face value.
- cloutchaser 4y agoOr it's cleverly done so everyone has plausible deniability, when in reality everyone involved knew it was basically election interference and first amendment violation. It doesn't take an IQ of 200 to do that without leaving direct evidence.
- darawk 4y agoYa, that's a real possibility, and some of these cases will probably turn on the judge's perception of whether that is what was happening. It seems very hard to prove in a case like that one though.
- musicale 4y agoMy eyes keep confusing FB and FBI.
- banannaise 4y agoI would hesitate to even call it a mistake. A true story, timed so as to maximize the effectiveness of sensationalism, speculation, and disinformation around that story, is itself a form of disinformation.