8 ms·

Indeed. Mark Zuckerberg has long said the administration pressured Facebook to censor COVID-related content, including satire and humor. And now the administrat

Indeed. Mark Zuckerberg has long said the administration pressured Facebook to censor COVID-related content, including satire and humor. And now the administration has ended public funding for NPR and PBS. Chilling effect It goes back even further, just see the 1941 FCC “Mayflower Decision” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_doctrine

mrandish 8mo ago
When you say "the administration", it's worth noting you're describing actions by two different administrations. Both political parties have tried to silence dissenting views through soft censorship.
- dsl 8mo ago
  Censoring an interview with a political opponent is a far cry from spreading disinformation that is counter to broadly accepted medical advice during a pandemic with the intent of harming the general population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
  - aftbit 8mo ago
    Sure, but that's the straw-man version of the argument. During COVID, there was aggressive censorship of _everything_ related to the virus that didn't exactly toe the party line. Satire, comedy, and truly live questions (like the weak version of the lab leak hypothesis, that SARS-CoV-2 accidentally escaped from a lab into human population) were censored alongside the obviously false, harmful, and misleading takes about drinking bleach and Ivermectin. Both science and democracy require active conversation that permits dissenting viewpoints and challenges to the accepted wisdom. Once we have an organization deciding what "the truth" is, we're doomed to stagnation and extremely vulnerable to organizational capture by self-motivated people. In other words, once you build the political, legal, and technical machinery of censorship, you're half way to having it co-opted by people with anti-social intents.
    - lern_too_spel 8mo ago
      > During COVID, there was aggressive censorship of _everything_ related to the virus that didn't exactly toe the party line. Not by the government. This was by companies that wanted their customers not to die, so they could make money.
      - mrandish 8mo ago
        Zuckerberg says the White House pressured Facebook to 'censor' some COVID-19 content during the pandemic: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-white-house-pressured-facebook-to-censor-some-covid-19-content-during-the-pandemic https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-wh... > "The United States government pressured Twitter to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19 and the pandemic... Take, for example, Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kulldorff often tweeted views at odds with U.S. public health authorities ... Kulldorff’s statement was an expert’s opinion—one that happened to be in line with vaccine policies in numerous other countries. Yet it was deemed “false information” by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines." How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate: https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate
        lern_too_spel 8mo ago
        "Pressured." They merely suggested that it was better for the country and for business, and most of the companies agreed. There were no threats of fines or lawsuits, and none were levied.
        Schmerika 8mo ago
        > There were no threats of fines or lawsuits Weren't there huge monopoly cases being furthered against Meta, Twitter and TikTok at that time? And more action against other major tech companies If I'm threatening you over your 'possible' monopoly with one hand, and 'politely' asking you to censor millions of stories with the other - are those things completely unrelated? Or is there possible an implied message there? A mafioso will never tell you straight-up that they're threatening and extorting you. But if you look between the lines even a little bit you can discern the message. (Sometimes the person delivering that message isn't even aware of the threat they're sending; afaik it's entirely possible that Lina Khan was completely genuine with her push.) > and none were levied. Well everyone did what they were 'politely asked', didn't they. Meta alone removed or suppressed well over a hundred million posts.
  - mrandish 8mo ago
    Unfortunately, reasonable views from experts like Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Jay Bhattacharya Professor of Medicine at Stanford were also suppressed. Kulldorff only responded to a question saying: "COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children." Which is correct, mainstream epidemiology and was the government guidance in the most countries at the time. https://undark.org/2024/01/08/covid-misinformation-censorship/ https://undark.org/2024/01/08/covid-misinformation-censorshi... How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate: https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate
    - ImPostingOnHN 8mo ago
      > views from experts like Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Jay Bhattacharya Professor of Medicine at Stanford were also suppressed It turns out that when you have millions of doctors (or scientists) in the world, at least some of them are going to say things that go against scientific consensus. This does not mean they're correct. Here are 2 more examples of people saying things: > [Kulldorff's] declaration was widely rejected, and was criticized as being unethical and infeasible by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization. Francis S. Collins, NIH director, called him a "fringe epidemiologist". [0] The lesson here is, if you're cherry picking individuals, rather than going with peer-reviewed scientific consensus, you're liable to be blown way off-course at some point. Personality cults are bad no matter who it is. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff
  - true_religion 8mo ago
    More to the point… the same president was in power during when COVID information was supposedly being censored, and today when political opposition is supposedly being censored. So OPs argument that it’s both parties doing it falls flat on its face.
- plagiarist 8mo ago
  They do know that. They are disingenuously attempting to equate asking a platform to remove disinformation with using government resources to threaten a platform into silence.
- CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
  >Both political parties have tried to silence dissenting views through soft censorship You're right, thanks. If I could edit I would
- lesuorac 8mo ago
  No hes not. He's describing the same administration in two different terms. Mark has no problems lying to people that Biden administration sued Meta (it was Trump's [1]) and individuals like Joe Rogan have no problems not calling him out on it. Trump was president in 2019, 2020. Covid starts in 2019. It's his administration that the twitter files is talking about when they mention censorship. It's his administration that started the big tech lawsuits. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTC_v._Meta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTC_v._Meta
  - jajuuka 8mo ago
    This seems like a tenuous connection at best. The Biden admin were actually sued for their relationship with social media companies. The suit failed but the conclusion was still that the administration was involved in pushing social media companies to take specific actions. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-missouri-formerly-missouri-v-biden https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-... There are also correspondence about moderation right after Biden was elected from his admin. So he's not blameless here. https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/115561/documents/HHRG-118-IF16-20230328-SD019.pdf https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/115561/documents/... Personally I don't care, but we should at least be factual in criticism.
    - hn_acker 8mo ago
      > The Biden admin were actually sued for their relationship with social media companies. The suit failed but the conclusion was still that the administration was involved in pushing social media companies to take specific actions. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-missouri-formerly-missouri-v-biden https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-... That's an misleading description of the "conclusion" (and incorrect if by "involvement" or "pushing" you meant unconstitutional behavior). The conclusion of Murthy v. Missouri is that the plaintiffs lacked standing to seek a preliminary injunction against the federal government's (under the Biden administration) requests/"demands" to social media companies to remove users' speech [1]. Why was there no standing? Because the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a minimum of evidence that the Biden administration had coerced or threatened social media companies to censor users' speech [1]: > To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a Government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek. Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction. Or rather, the plaintiffs did not demonstrate sufficient evidence that, in the period leading up to the original lawsuits, the social media companies' decisions to remove the relevant speech mentioned by the Biden administration had been anything other than the social media companies' voluntary choices. [1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/603/23-411/#tab-opinion-4907766 https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/603/23-411/#tab-...
lern_too_spel 8mo ago
> Mark Zuckerberg has long said the administration pressured Facebook to censor COVID-related content, including satire and humor. He said this once and did not describe the pressure. In that same letter, he said that the company didn't agree and government officials "expressed a lot of frustration." There were no threats of fines or lawsuits.
nitwit005 8mo ago
Pressured, as in asked them to do something, which they ignored. Possibly problematic, but the elephant in the room is Trump directly threatening to put Mark Zuckerberg in prison for life: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/trump-zuckerberg-election-book-00176639 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/trump-zuckerberg-el...
- Schmerika 8mo ago
  > asked them to do something, which they ignored. They certainly did not ignore the request [0] (which came at the same time as the FTC were suing Meta for monopoly). Hundreds of millions of posts were taken down or suppressed. 0 - https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/biden-administration-repeatedly-pressured-meta-mark-zuckerberg-in-letter-6426079 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/biden-administration-repeate...
  - nitwit005 8mo ago
    That article does say they ignored it: > In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree. Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.
    - Schmerika 8mo ago
      You're misinterpreting that sentence. It's not that they never agreed. It's that sometimes they disagreed, and they got pressured harder when they did. Did you read the first two paragraphs? > In a letter to the US Congress, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has alleged that the US government under Joe Biden "repeatedly pressured" Meta to censor certain content on its platforms. > In the letter addressed to US House of Representatives, Mr Zuckerberg said that the platform had to make some changes, that "with the benefit of hindsight and new information," they won't make today. He added that he regrets not being "more outspoken" about it. We know for a fact that Meta had removed over 20 million Corona posts by April 2021 alone [0]. Some of those were genuine misinformation - but a hell of a lot were legitimate and important questions from reputable sources. It's simply not reasonable to believe this wasn't due to pressure. 0 - https://www.cnet.com/news/social-media/facebook-removed-more-than-20-million-posts-for-covid-19-misinformation/ https://www.cnet.com/news/social-media/facebook-removed-more...

mrandish 8mo ago

When you say "the administration", it's worth noting you're describing actions by two different administrations. Both political parties have tried to silence dissenting views through soft censorship.

dsl 8mo ago
Censoring an interview with a political opponent is a far cry from spreading disinformation that is counter to broadly accepted medical advice during a pandemic with the intent of harming the general population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
- aftbit 8mo ago
  Sure, but that's the straw-man version of the argument. During COVID, there was aggressive censorship of _everything_ related to the virus that didn't exactly toe the party line. Satire, comedy, and truly live questions (like the weak version of the lab leak hypothesis, that SARS-CoV-2 accidentally escaped from a lab into human population) were censored alongside the obviously false, harmful, and misleading takes about drinking bleach and Ivermectin. Both science and democracy require active conversation that permits dissenting viewpoints and challenges to the accepted wisdom. Once we have an organization deciding what "the truth" is, we're doomed to stagnation and extremely vulnerable to organizational capture by self-motivated people. In other words, once you build the political, legal, and technical machinery of censorship, you're half way to having it co-opted by people with anti-social intents.
  - lern_too_spel 8mo ago
    > During COVID, there was aggressive censorship of _everything_ related to the virus that didn't exactly toe the party line. Not by the government. This was by companies that wanted their customers not to die, so they could make money.
    - mrandish 8mo ago
      Zuckerberg says the White House pressured Facebook to 'censor' some COVID-19 content during the pandemic: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-white-house-pressured-facebook-to-censor-some-covid-19-content-during-the-pandemic https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-wh... > "The United States government pressured Twitter to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19 and the pandemic... Take, for example, Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kulldorff often tweeted views at odds with U.S. public health authorities ... Kulldorff’s statement was an expert’s opinion—one that happened to be in line with vaccine policies in numerous other countries. Yet it was deemed “false information” by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines." How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate: https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate
      - lern_too_spel 8mo ago
        "Pressured." They merely suggested that it was better for the country and for business, and most of the companies agreed. There were no threats of fines or lawsuits, and none were levied.
        Schmerika 8mo ago
        > There were no threats of fines or lawsuits Weren't there huge monopoly cases being furthered against Meta, Twitter and TikTok at that time? And more action against other major tech companies If I'm threatening you over your 'possible' monopoly with one hand, and 'politely' asking you to censor millions of stories with the other - are those things completely unrelated? Or is there possible an implied message there? A mafioso will never tell you straight-up that they're threatening and extorting you. But if you look between the lines even a little bit you can discern the message. (Sometimes the person delivering that message isn't even aware of the threat they're sending; afaik it's entirely possible that Lina Khan was completely genuine with her push.) > and none were levied. Well everyone did what they were 'politely asked', didn't they. Meta alone removed or suppressed well over a hundred million posts.
- mrandish 8mo ago
  Unfortunately, reasonable views from experts like Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Jay Bhattacharya Professor of Medicine at Stanford were also suppressed. Kulldorff only responded to a question saying: "COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children." Which is correct, mainstream epidemiology and was the government guidance in the most countries at the time. https://undark.org/2024/01/08/covid-misinformation-censorship/ https://undark.org/2024/01/08/covid-misinformation-censorshi... How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate: https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate
  - ImPostingOnHN 8mo ago
    > views from experts like Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Jay Bhattacharya Professor of Medicine at Stanford were also suppressed It turns out that when you have millions of doctors (or scientists) in the world, at least some of them are going to say things that go against scientific consensus. This does not mean they're correct. Here are 2 more examples of people saying things: > [Kulldorff's] declaration was widely rejected, and was criticized as being unethical and infeasible by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization. Francis S. Collins, NIH director, called him a "fringe epidemiologist". [0] The lesson here is, if you're cherry picking individuals, rather than going with peer-reviewed scientific consensus, you're liable to be blown way off-course at some point. Personality cults are bad no matter who it is. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff
- true_religion 8mo ago
  More to the point… the same president was in power during when COVID information was supposedly being censored, and today when political opposition is supposedly being censored. So OPs argument that it’s both parties doing it falls flat on its face.
plagiarist 8mo ago
They do know that. They are disingenuously attempting to equate asking a platform to remove disinformation with using government resources to threaten a platform into silence.
CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
>Both political parties have tried to silence dissenting views through soft censorship You're right, thanks. If I could edit I would
lesuorac 8mo ago
No hes not. He's describing the same administration in two different terms. Mark has no problems lying to people that Biden administration sued Meta (it was Trump's [1]) and individuals like Joe Rogan have no problems not calling him out on it. Trump was president in 2019, 2020. Covid starts in 2019. It's his administration that the twitter files is talking about when they mention censorship. It's his administration that started the big tech lawsuits. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTC_v._Meta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTC_v._Meta
- jajuuka 8mo ago
  This seems like a tenuous connection at best. The Biden admin were actually sued for their relationship with social media companies. The suit failed but the conclusion was still that the administration was involved in pushing social media companies to take specific actions. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-missouri-formerly-missouri-v-biden https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-... There are also correspondence about moderation right after Biden was elected from his admin. So he's not blameless here. https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/115561/documents/HHRG-118-IF16-20230328-SD019.pdf https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/115561/documents/... Personally I don't care, but we should at least be factual in criticism.
  - hn_acker 8mo ago
    > The Biden admin were actually sued for their relationship with social media companies. The suit failed but the conclusion was still that the administration was involved in pushing social media companies to take specific actions. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-missouri-formerly-missouri-v-biden https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-... That's an misleading description of the "conclusion" (and incorrect if by "involvement" or "pushing" you meant unconstitutional behavior). The conclusion of Murthy v. Missouri is that the plaintiffs lacked standing to seek a preliminary injunction against the federal government's (under the Biden administration) requests/"demands" to social media companies to remove users' speech [1]. Why was there no standing? Because the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a minimum of evidence that the Biden administration had coerced or threatened social media companies to censor users' speech [1]: > To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a Government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek. Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction. Or rather, the plaintiffs did not demonstrate sufficient evidence that, in the period leading up to the original lawsuits, the social media companies' decisions to remove the relevant speech mentioned by the Biden administration had been anything other than the social media companies' voluntary choices. [1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/603/23-411/#tab-opinion-4907766 https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/603/23-411/#tab-...

lern_too_spel 8mo ago

> Mark Zuckerberg has long said the administration pressured Facebook to censor COVID-related content, including satire and humor. He said this once and did not describe the pressure. In that same letter, he said that the company didn't agree and government officials "expressed a lot of frustration." There were no threats of fines or lawsuits.

nitwit005 8mo ago

Pressured, as in asked them to do something, which they ignored. Possibly problematic, but the elephant in the room is Trump directly threatening to put Mark Zuckerberg in prison for life: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/trump-zuckerberg-election-book-00176639 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/trump-zuckerberg-el...

Schmerika 8mo ago
> asked them to do something, which they ignored. They certainly did not ignore the request [0] (which came at the same time as the FTC were suing Meta for monopoly). Hundreds of millions of posts were taken down or suppressed. 0 - https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/biden-administration-repeatedly-pressured-meta-mark-zuckerberg-in-letter-6426079 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/biden-administration-repeate...
- nitwit005 8mo ago
  That article does say they ignored it: > In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree. Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.
  - Schmerika 8mo ago
    You're misinterpreting that sentence. It's not that they never agreed. It's that sometimes they disagreed, and they got pressured harder when they did. Did you read the first two paragraphs? > In a letter to the US Congress, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has alleged that the US government under Joe Biden "repeatedly pressured" Meta to censor certain content on its platforms. > In the letter addressed to US House of Representatives, Mr Zuckerberg said that the platform had to make some changes, that "with the benefit of hindsight and new information," they won't make today. He added that he regrets not being "more outspoken" about it. We know for a fact that Meta had removed over 20 million Corona posts by April 2021 alone [0]. Some of those were genuine misinformation - but a hell of a lot were legitimate and important questions from reputable sources. It's simply not reasonable to believe this wasn't due to pressure. 0 - https://www.cnet.com/news/social-media/facebook-removed-more-than-20-million-posts-for-covid-19-misinformation/ https://www.cnet.com/news/social-media/facebook-removed-more...