Let’s be absolutely clear: The censorship we’re witnessing from the Valley is a sign of conservative weakness.
Let’s be absolutely clear: The censorship we’re witnessing from the Valley is a sign of conservative weakness.
Three years ago, historian Niall Ferguson wrote about Silicon Valley’s determination not to get caught flat-footed again when it comes to Donald Trump. “Make no mistake: 2016 will never happen again,” he warned. Zuckerberg had been personally lobbied by Barack Obama on these matters. Governments in Europe were looking for their pound of flesh too.
Suddenly, Facebook and other social networks got more active politically. They banned online ads in Ireland’s abortion referendum, which advantaged the pro-legalization side. Germany passed a law effectively siccing social-media companies on the government’s right-wing critics. While the headlines were about going after extremists and plots of violence, the list of punishable thoughts expressed on social media included “loud and aggressive insults” that do “psychological violence.”
Some conservatives talk about the censorship, restriction, demonetization, vindictive editorializing, and banning they receive from behemoth social-media companies like they’ve won something. “Aha! I have you right where we want you.” Maybe they’re hoping for another round of invites to the San Francisco campus for a berate-and-conciliate photo op with the CEO.
Let’s be absolutely clear on this: This is a clear sign of conservative weakness. Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook and Twitter took dramatic and unprecedented action to slow the circulation of the New York Post’s stories about Hunter Biden’s emails because they see it as in their interest. Billionaires usually become billionaires by knowing what is in their interest. This is a bet, first of all, on the election of Joe Biden and an attempt to mollify liberals who are still sore about 2016. It is a bet against Josh Hawley and the small band of GOP figures who want to regulate the Valley.
The power of progressive actors to coordinate across industries against conservatives has been rapidly enhanced in recent years. You’ve seen that this week. The editors of the premier dictionary issue a ruling that “sexual preference” is “offensive” a few hours after a producer on MSNBC claims to be offended by a conservative political figure using that phrase. No one told Webster’s to make that change. They just know they can and won’t let any institutional duty come before a partisan one. What we are seeing this week is consolidation.
Instead of opening discussion, social media often has an asphyxiating quality. The status games people play mean there is enormous safety and power in converging on the highest-status opinion. It has suffocated our political conversation and created a closed loop. The Biden campaign itself cited Twitter and Facebook’s decisions to restrict the New York Post story as evidence that the story was discredited and debunked. But this is circular logic given that the people deciding this are presumably aligned with the campaign’s aims.
It’s the same with the wider scandal. If you ask why the former American vice president’s son got a lucrative job at a government-connected energy firm in Ukraine after the United States assisted the new government in overthrowing its democratically elected predecessor, or why Biden was so anxious to get rid of the Ukrainian prosecutor who was trouble for that firm, you are reminded that the EU also wanted the same prosecutor gone. But, of course, the reason that the democratically elected government of Ukraine was overthrown was that it failed to sign an economic agreement with the European Union. After the revolution, EU figures tied to that effort, such as Poland’s Aleksander Kwaśniewski, also got lucrative board positions at state-connected companies.
One other dead-end response conservatives will launch is to demand that Facebook and Twitter clarify their policies. Explain to us how to stay on the right side of the law. Tell us how to not be Alex Jones. But there is no predictable way to stay on the right side of Facebook and Twitter. They don’t make and stick to policy. They don’t explain changes before they enact them. For years, it has been obvious that social-media companies simply react and respond to the moral panics happening at other media companies. They are terrified of being blamed or, in Facebook’s case, blamed again for Donald Trump. Alex Jones was just a test case. You’re the real one.
Do you think they are acting this quickly, decisively, and creatively to stop the spread of misinformation in Tagalog from President Duterte? Do you think they’re putting in the heave-ho effort in Turkey to keep Erdogan honest? Think they’re putting fact checks on the Malaysian dictator Mahathir Mohamad’s tweets? Don’t kid yourselves that this is about racism or authoritarianism.
What Facebook and Twitter discovered to their horror in 2016 is that elite social-media companies are elite media companies. And there are expectations in their industry. The people they want to employ, and the people that their employees want to impress, belong to the same class as those who work for the New York Times and Washington Post.
Libertarians will tell conservatives that this doesn’t matter. “Build your own Facebook! Build your own Twitter!” But Facebook and Twitter are the most powerful media companies on earth, and most other media companies have become dependent on them. And this is not going to stop with social networks. The next frontier is payment processors. Good luck launching your next direct-to-consumer subscription product when your most passionate fans can’t promote it on Facebook and Twitter and you can’t accept PayPal, Visa, or Mastercard.
Your daddy’s GOP, the one we often imagine was more devoted to free markets, would not have put up with enormous American companies like Ford and IBM working openly against them. Major corporations often developed fastidious conventions for appearing non-partisan. Those rules are gone.
This isn’t a counsel of despair. There is plenty of work to be done. And conservatives should continue to build whatever they can. Human beings were made to create.
But there is no upside to the discovery that the most powerful media companies can throttle you without warning. There’s only a big ugly fight.