Of course, Schiff and Whitehouse are not asking Meta to surveil and suppress their own speech or those of their political allies.
Mark Caputo and Jonathan Allen of NBC News report that Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential “campaign is formally petitioning Facebook’s parent company to unblock his account there” and is said to be considering a return to Twitter as well. There are a number of notable angles here. A return to Twitter would likely not face opposition from the company, as Elon Musk has said he would reinstate the former president after reinstatement won a Twitter poll in which over 15 million votes were cast. But it would require Trump to effectively admit the failure of Truth Social, a network that basically exists only to facilitate Trump’s communications and host Trump supporters banned from Twitter. That would be a reversal for Trump, a fatal blow to Truth Social, and a humiliation for Devin Nunes, who left Congress to run it. It also requires Trump to work around agreements he has made with Truth Social; according to the company’s public SEC filings, it has told investors that Trump has agreed to post all of his content first to Truth Social, which has a six-hour window of exclusivity; after that, Trump can re-post the same messages to Twitter and Facebook. Trump trying to get back on the more mainstream social media platforms is also a tacit admission that he needs to be there in order to run a campaign, raise money, and get his message out.
With Facebook, however, Trump faces an additional obstacle: Congressional Democrats are pressuring the company to disallow Trump’s return. In a December 14 letter to Facebook’s parent company Meta, Congressman Adam Schiff and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse — joined by representatives André Carson and Kathy Castor — wrote “to urge Meta to maintain its commitment to keeping dangerous and unfounded election denial content off its platform. To that end, we also urge Meta and its leadership to continue the suspension of former president Donald Trump’s Facebook account beyond January, and to carefully monitor and counter the spread of harmful election misinformation, including the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election, on Facebook.” Their grievance?
We saw in the 2022 midterm elections that candidates who posted the same falsehoods about disproven electoral fraud in the 2020 election and expected fraud in 2022 elections were allowed to spread the Big Lie on Facebook. Unlike other major social media platforms, Meta’s policies do not prohibit posts that make unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud. A review by the Washington Post found 18 candidates denying the 2020 election results and 17 candidates claiming the 2022 elections will be rigged or corrupt posted on Facebook, with none of these posts on Facebook being labeled or challenged. This is highly troubling, and an area where Meta must improve its oversight and enforcement.
Of course, Schiff and Whitehouse, who are among the leading purveyors of conspiracy theories in politics, are not asking Meta to surveil and suppress their own speech or those of their political allies. Not the conspiracy theories that Whitehouse routinely spins. Not Schiff’s discredited conspiracy theory that Hunter Biden’s laptop wasn’t really his but was Russian disinformation. Not the Democratic congressman who earned Schiff’s praise for claiming that Republicans “stole that last election” in a Texas House district. Not the House Democrats’ new leader Hakeem Jeffries, who had Schiff’s support in becoming the latest Democrat elevated to a prominent position in party leadership who rejects the legitimacy of Republican election victories.
Among their demands:
• After seeing election misinformation spread on Facebook regarding the 2022 elections this year, what changes will Meta make to its election integrity policies to ensure that misinformation about elections does not continue to spread?
• With the rise of candidates spreading election denial — both past and present — will Meta commit to monitoring and consider suspending dangerous, unfounded posts, regardless of who posts the content?
• Will Meta commit to keeping their election infrastructure in place year-round? What changes will be made to increase its capacity to monitor and provide truthful context to its users?
• Have the recent layoffs at Meta decreased the number of employees working on the misinformation, election integrity or foreign malign influence teams?
• What criteria will Meta consider when reviewing the ongoing suspension of Donald Trump’s accounts? Will Meta request any assurances from the candidate?
• Will Meta analyze the posts of Trump on Truth Social and other statements he has made when making a decision on his suspended account?
This is not Schiff’s first foray into this area; he has repeatedly used his office to pressure Twitter as well as to suppress the speech of critics of the federal public health establishment.
To all of this, I have to ask: Who do these people think they are? Certainly not members of the elected legislature of the free American republic. No patriotic American should ever seek to wield the power of government to suppress the political speech of partisan opponents. When Democrats use the press and social media to spread lies and misinformation — which they tend to do on any day ending in “y” — the proper response is not to call for them to be de-platformed but exposed and corrected. However, the urge to use the power of government to silence is hard-wired deep into the progressive view of speech and democracy as things to be supervised by elites rather than adjudicated by the people. In a self-respecting republic, the proper response to the abuse by Schiff and Whitehouse of their government positions would be tar and feathers.