Censorship: Twitter Takeover Totally Panics Political Regime of LeftLibDemSocMediaTechPol

[grarpamp]

https://www.theepochtimes.com/censors-set-their-sights-on-musks-twitter-takeover_4914193.html

Censors Set Their Sights On Musk's Twitter Takeover



Not long after Elon Musk acquired Twitter with his promise of ending
its censorship regime, a reporter from Reuters covering a White House
press conference asked Karine Jean-Pierre, President Joe Biden’s press
secretary, whether Twitter might become a “vector of misinformation.”
Jean-Pierre’s response at the Nov. 28 press conference was:

    “This is something that we’re certainly keeping an eye on. Look,
we have always been very clear that when it comes to social media
platforms, it is their responsibility to make sure that when it comes
to misinformation, when it comes to the hate that we’re seeing, that
they take action, that they continue to take action. … We’re all
monitoring what’s currently occurring.”

That sounded pretty chilling. The idea that the government could be
“monitoring” any part of any media for “misinformation” and “hate”
speech—both of which are protected by the First Amendment unless they
stray into defamation or incitement to imminent crime—ought to raise
the hackles of anyone who cares about the Bill of Rights. And why, in
particular, should social-media platforms have any legal obligation to
“take action” against speech that might offend some people but is
neither criminal nor libelous?

But in fact, that is exactly what the nation’s two wokest states, New
York and California, have already decided that social media platforms,
a category that can include everything from Facebook to chatrooms and
traditional journalism blogs with comments, must henceforth do.

The New York law came first, in June, and it went into effect on Dec.
3. Realizing that free speech enjoys constitutional protection, New
York’s legislators decided to outlaw only what they cagily called
“hateful conduct.” But “hateful conduct,” as defined in the New York
law, means “the use of a social media network to vilify, humiliate, or
incite violence against a group or a class of persons on the basis of
race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex,
sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.” Vilify?
Humiliate? That sounds pretty much like … constitutionally protected
speech.

Disturbing as it may be to listen to a rant against Jews, for example,
the Al Sharpton of the 1990s and the Kanye West of 2022 weren’t saying
anything that could be prosecuted. But the New York law requires
social media networks to post “clear and concise policy readily
available and accessible on their website and application that
includes how such social media network will respond and address the
reports of incidents of hateful conduct on their platform.” That
forces everyone with a blog to pay lawyers to draft a policy statement
acceptable to New York regulators and then spend hours trying to
“respond,” for example, to a woman who says she feels “humiliated”
that the blogger has described her as overweight.

​The California law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September and set
to go into effect on Jan. 1, at least has the virtue of exempting
service providers with gross revenues of less than $100 million per
year. It’s targeted at Bay Area tech giants such as Facebook’s parent
company, Meta, and Twitter. But its reporting requirements are even
more onerous. Every company that falls under the statute’s purview
must submit a twice-a-year report to the California attorney general
detailing its moderation policies, not simply for “hate speech” but
for such categories as “racism,” “extremism,” “radicalization,”
“disinformation or misinformation,” “harassment,” and “foreign
political influence.” The company must list every instance that it
flagged such content and how it handled it. State Rep. Jesse Gabriel,
who introduced the bill that Newsom signed, said the new reporting
requirements are designed to deal with “conspiracy theories and other
dangerous content” allegedly widespread on social media.

​Neither the New York nor the California law explicitly censors
disapproved forms of speech or requires social media platforms to do
so. But their vague and subjective language (“vilify,” “extremism”)
coupled with their threats of sanctions for noncompliance (a
$15,000-a-day fine in California, a $1,000-a-day fine plus a possible
attorney general’s investigation in New York) are powerful inducements
for social media companies to play Big Brother. And in New York, for
example, Attorney General Letitia James, responding to the mass
shooting in March at a Buffalo supermarket that was briefly
livestreamed, has called for even tougher restrictions on internet
content, such as criminal and civil penalties for transmitting images
that might inspire others to commit violent acts.   ​

​On Dec. 1, Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor and founder of the
legal-news blog Volokh Conspiracy, together with two social media
platforms, Rumble and Locals, filed a lawsuit challenging the New York
content-moderation law on First Amendment grounds.

    “New York politicians are slapping a speech-police badge on my
chest because I run a blog,” Volokh said.

As for California, University of Santa Clara law professor Eric
Goldman writes: “By prioritizing certain content categories, the bill
tells social media platforms that they must make special publication
decisions in those categories to please the regulators and enforcers
who are watching them. The resulting distortions to the platforms’
editorial decision-making constitutes censorship.”

​And as we’ve learned from the Biden-administration press secretary,
California and New York aren’t the only government entities whose
“regulators and enforcers” are “watching” social media with an eye to
cracking down. Musk’s takeover of Twitter and his relaxation of the
site’s content-moderation policies that routinely muffled
conservatives have outraged political progressives.

A Nov. 23 report from the liberal Brookings Institution asserted that
“hate speech” on Twitter, including derogatory references to Jews and
blacks, had increased as much as 500 percent since Musk assumed
control of the platform on Oct. 27. The report noted that the bulk of
this invective came from about 300 troll accounts, but that didn’t
stop Brookings from declaring, “When acquisitions of social media
platforms occur, there should be an obligation of the new owner(s) to
ensure that hate speech is moderated.”

That was a broad hint to Congress and the Biden administration. Expect
federal regulators to try to force some heavy-handed censorship of
Twitter, Bill of Rights or no Bill of Rights.