Shockingly, the permanent
suspension of hard-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene from
Twitter and her temporary suspension from Facebook does not appear to
shock us anymore.
What is at stake here is far more critical
than one congresswoman spreading nonsense on social media. The precedent set a
year ago, where unaccountable Big Tech simply banned an elected president from
the public square, has morphed into a new reality: unaccountable tech barons
have become the judge and jury of political debate and what is true or not in
society.
The dangers of this reality cannot be
stressed enough. Whatever one thinks of Greene or her bonkers views on Covid-19
vaccinations or the QAnon conspiracy theory, the censoring of her opinions from
the public realm – particularly by private social media companies – is far
worse, for two related reasons.
The first is that the censors are Big Tech oligarchs. They have by default become the unelected, unaccountable corporate Ministry of Truth. Because they are not the state, we have a naïve belief that their arbitrary ideological purges are either less odious or a welcome intervention.
But their
control over the modern public square has enormous implications for the future
of elections. They, and they alone, will determine what can and cannot be said
on their platforms –where, it should be remembered, millions of voters share
ideas and look to for information.
With the
arrogance of only those who have zero self-awareness, Facebook and Twitter are
pretty proud of their role as defenders of what they regard as the truth. According to Facebook Vice President of Content Policy
Monika Bickert, the company is “taking steps to combat election
interference and misinformation while also working to help people vote.”
Twitter’s
view of its role as Big Brother is even more chilling. A company spokesperson
sent the following statement to Recode on Tuesday following Greene’s
suspension: “Our approach before and after January 6 has been to take
strong enforcement action against accounts and Tweets that incite violence or
have the potential to lead to offline harm. Engagement and focus across
government, civil society, and the private sector are also critical. We
recognize that Twitter has an important role to play, and we’re committed to
doing our part.”
Seriously?
Should accounts and tweets that have the ill-defined “potential to lead to
offline harm” be banned? So, Twitter now has God-like powers, with insights
into the minds of those tweeting and those reading them. One wonders what this
might mean during the 2022 midterm election cycle and its coming onslaught of
contentious speeches from elected officials and political candidates running for
office.
And this is the second problem. The assumption behind all this ideological suppression is that Big Tech knows the truth, and we, the little people, don’t. They can spot misinformation, but we can’t. Dubious claims do not influence them. We are easy prey, stupid and gullible, who need saving from ourselves.
The obvious point here is that this
debased view of ordinary people is why there is no outcry against Big Tech
tyranny, as seen in the suspension of Greene, Trump, and others. The mainstream
media, the institution that ought to be playing the role of speaking truth to
power, shares the same misanthropic views of the great unwashed.
The problem is not just Big Tech and their
self-appointed role of herding the sheep. Truth is not something that can be
delivered from on high. Neither Big Tech nor politicians are qualified to
pronounce what is true or not. That is for the electorate to decide, and to do
that through the exchange of ideas, through a clash of opinions, debate, and
the presentation and rejection of information in the public realm. In short,
through the exercising of free speech – something the Big Tech oligarchs have
shown they have no regard for whatsoever as they seek to define and police
social media.
Greene has been the first big platform
cancellation of 2022. She will most certainly not be the last. The fight for
free speech in 2022 will be an uphill struggle. But Greene’s ban shows that
what is now rampant and needing to be checked is not misinformation, but the
arbitrary power and tyranny of Silicon Valley’s unelected oligarchs.
Written by
Norman Lewis
is a writer, speaker, and consultant on
innovation and technology was most recently a Director at
PriceWaterhouseCoopers, where he set up and led their crowdsourced innovation
service
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