Frozen Peaches and Big Tech

 In The Conservative American  (the singular "The" is looking more and more prescient these days) Josh Hammer has an article talking about how "Big Tech" must be brought to heel so that "Conservatives" can have their bad say on Social Media. Or else! This is part 230 (which most of his readers probably don't understand correctly) and part generic anti-Trust and an implicit assertion (i.e. without evidence) that Big Tech is silencing conservative voices using their awesome power to shut down half of the debate and Free Speech (TM) in America (or, you know, maybe Amerika?).

What's going on?

What IS Going On?

In the waning days of the 2020 campaign a bombshell was unveiled: A laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was found ("found") with incriminating emails and pictures showing that Hunter was trying to make money with Chinese business people possibly giving 10% to his dad. According to who else you listen to it also: contained pedophilia, clearly stated that Biden was on China's direct payroll as a foreign agent, had other stuff that was ABOUT TO COME OUT that was horrible--just horrible--about Sleepy Joe.

Here are some facts reported about the story:

1. The guy pushing the story--Rudy Giuliani--isn't seen as an especially credible source by just about anyone not doing Fox Prime Time (the "entertainment" slots).
2. Almost no one save The Wall Street Journal and Fox News was actually granted access to the documents. This, alone, is both suspect and makes it hard to report on.
3. While the emails are (in The Omnivore's opinion) probably genuine, the provenance of the laptop--how it came into Rudy's hands--doesn't make any sense and has the fingerprints of someone trying to inject information into the election in a sideways fashion (The Russians? Maybe? Bannon or Roger Stone? Sure.) The story--that the laptop(s) were dropped off by Hunter and never recovered can't be substantiated and doesn't really make any sense. This, alone, makes it hard to report on.
4. The writer for The Post--which did publish the story--took his name off the byline. Why?  Because he wasn't willing to be associated with it. This is not the action of a reporter breaking the story of the century.
5. What we HAVE seen in the emails that ARE available is (a) nothing new (Hunter got a good position based on his pedigree--the same for Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric Trump) and (b) does NOT link Biden---nor even Hunter--to any illegal activity alleged or otherwise.
6. The reader of the story is meant to *assume* that the mention of Hunter links Biden to unspecified illicit activities and therefore you should not vote for him. What are those? It doesn't say. We don't know.

This, of course, feels like (a) the Wikileaks Emails--dropped by Russia to take the pressure off of Trump at the release of the Pussy Tape and (b) feels like the Steele Dossier which was shopped around but refused by all news outlets other than Buzzfeed which finally published it despite not being able to verify almost any of the information.

Today we know that Wikileaks was, in fact, a Russian Op (thanks to Mueller's and the Senate Intelligence's investigations) and that the Steele Dossier was, in large part, correct (main points: Russia was helping Trump, Russia hacked for Trump, Trump people met with Russia--yep: that's all spelled out explicitly in the investigation documents that are published).

Needless to say: most media outlets didn't want to be useful tools in the spread of this kind of information and so they both (a) covered the meta-story ("why we aren't hyping the laptop") and, in the case of Twitter, simply forbid it being disseminated on their platform. It is hard for The Omnivore to blame a social media site for not wanting to be  a vector for dodgy info inserted into a fraught electoral campaign (especially as Twitter had forbid political ads on its network in the run up to the election).

Now, in the aftermath of the Jan 6th Insurrection-Riot, other voices are being silenced: Project Veritas has been kicked off Twitter (along with, you know, Donald Trump), and Parler, given numerous warnings by Amazon, was booted from their cloud servers for failing to take effective action to keep violent threats off its platform.

Conservatives (?) see the reformation of Social Media--the prevention of banning their voices--as a new 21st century rallying cry.

Whew.

So--Are Conservative Voices Being Silenced?

Well, yes . . . and no.  People talking about deregulation, small government, and muscular foreign policy aren't being suspended or kicked off. If we define "conservative" as "contesting election results" and "implying that Jews secretly run the world" then, uh, yeah--it turns out? That can get you kicked. It can lose you that plumb Disney job. Especially if you keep doing it after being told to / asked to stop.

Gina Carano was booted from Disney's The Mandalorian for "Being Conservative." This is one of her "Conservative Tweets" 

Uh--yeah: that's great. Who are all those people playing Monopoly on our backs? The Jewish Illuminati, guys. It turns out that talking on Social Media about The Jews is a pretty good move in Republican circles these days to raise your profile. Of course when those comments get out into the larger media, you can face consequences (MTG lost her appointments for them).

The takeaway here is that it's a bit hard to say if Conservative Voices are being silenced because in almost every event there is some aggravating factor beyond the person just being "conservative" (Josh Hawley loses his book deal after the storming of the Capitol, for example).

In order to make the case that "Conservatives" are trying to make, one needs to either (a) believe that the election WAS stolen and therefore Social Media is silencing legitimate voices--this is rank conspiracy theory since it involves numerous Trump-appointed and generally loyalist Republicans as well as tons of Democrats and normal people . . . none of whom have come forward to talk---0r  (b) that there is some other "conservative speech" that is being systematically shut down while people like Ted Cruz seem to be doing just fine avoiding the mine-fields while still being pretty trollish online.

So, no: we don't have a solid case that The Bad Thing (TM) is even happening.

But What About The Larger Free Speech Argument?

There is a reason one of The Omnivore's bylines is TL;DR--but if you are here, let's discuss. In the 21st century, so goes the argument, the Town Square is now privately owned--but a public service--like a lunch-counter at a restaurant--and you have to serve both black people AND conservatives at the counter since the 1st Amendment secures the "Town Square" for everyone--even if it's owned by Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and Google.

What are the merits of this?

The Implicit Assumptions In  The Argument

In order to process these arguments one has to make the implicit assumptions that:

1. The large group of "Big Tech" is all "one thing." That is--the Public Square is happening on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Gab (uh-oh?), Telegram (double uh-oh), Disqus (triple uh-oh), and other platforms that are all working in concert to "be" the fora in which free speech now happens. This leaves off (a) The larger Internet where all kinds of information is widely disseminated such as Fox News', OANNs', and The Epoch Time's web pages--and that Social Media is the only platform for "speech" in the new world. Clearly going on Fox to complain about your book being canceled or going on Bob Maher to talk about how COVID must have come from a lab to 4-5 million people on one showing doesn't count as "speech" for these purposes.
2. That there is either no cause for kicking someone off a platform or that there must be some universal set of rules that we have yet to see that would be applied. Can you call for killing the President? Can you make plans to storm the Capitol? Promote the execution of Congress People? Use the N-word gratuitously? Is there a line?
3. It supposes--without argument--that today conservatives need to be a protected class like Black People. If I have a public restaurant I have to serve black people under the law. I don't have to serve Nazis. Nazis are not a protected class. Black People are. I can fire you for being a Nazi. I can't fire you for being black. The idea that conservatives need to be a special protected class is never argued--it's just assumed. What the umbrella would even cover isn't clear (small government, deregulation, muscular foreign policy? LOL, no--that's not enough--people aren't being banned for that anyway).

Together this set of implicit assumptions makes the argument that there is reform needed a form of begging the question: If you assume all of the above--without argument or specifics--then, okay: Twitter would be sued for banning all black people or for banning those who advocate for black people on social media--and would be excoriated for making a rule that in order to post you HAD to advocate for political assassinations--so, sure. The inverse of the above would be clear red flags.

But do we really have those assumptions made clear? No. We don't.

What Is Really Going On?

What is really going on is that the "Conservatives" in America have now hitched their wagon to a voting base that DEMANDS to be told lies. They require to be told that The Election Was Stolen by Dems (and R's and the DoJ and SCOTUS, and and and). They require to be told that BLM is full of Antifa Terrorists and that, maybe, Antifa false-flag-stormed the capitol.

Fox's ratings slide began when its decision desk--one of the top-tier ones in existence--called AZ early for Biden and it was Conservative heresy. 

Social Media, having been used as a vector for foreign attack and spread of disinformation as well as for organizing violence (including but not limited to the Storming of the US Capitol) is doing everything it can to stop the spread of that disinformation. In the midst of a pandemic, platforms are trying to not be tools in the spread of anti-Mask speech and COVID-Is-A-Lie narratives. This is understandable and laudable.

The fact that a bunch of speech--or at least actors--that conservatives happen to like get caught in the nets cast to stop this disinformation leads to the execrable defense of people real conservatives should never be defending in the first place.