May 6, 2021 - 11:23am
Earlier this year, I participated in an Intelligence2+, debate arguing against the motion ‘Big Tech was right to de-platform Trump’. This was my opening argument.
Following yesterday’s decision from the Facebook Oversight Board to permanently ban the former president from the platform, it seems relevant once again. Excerpt below:
This was naked censorship: it involved no law courts and no democratic vote. It’s dangerous and no true liberal should support it. It might feel good now if your team has the upper hand but the principle of censoring your opponents is going to come back to haunt you. Next time it won’t be your friends who control the media platforms, it will be your enemies.
Freddie Sayers is the Editor-in-Chief & CEO of UnHerd. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of YouGov, and founder of PoliticsHome.
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SubscribeTotally agree with Freddie. These people are NOT liberals or democrats and it will come back to bite them. Concentrating too much power in too few hands is never a good thing, whether it’s a politician or a corporation.
I hope it bites them like a pit bull dog.
The Left today tends towards fascism. Yes, frightening.
Progressives have become regressives.
Progressives have become the cancel mob.
Progressive = Hate. They are never about uplifting, it is all Retributive, or taking, or punishing, or getting back at, or shutting up, or closing down. They hide behind the mask of helping one group, but in fact are about bringing the other group down. They level down, not up.
If you favor silencing people, what are you afraid of them saying?
I am afraid of them twisting society, promoting hate and self doubt. It is called “Critical Race Theory’ and the ‘1619 Project’. And are fine as some kind of far Left Qanon loons, but are being taught in schools! Are required by private business, are required classes in University! No different than if Qanon theory was required in all schools, and was made the basis for HR policy.
no one is silencing those people, just the ones who think CRT is rot.
Of course Freddie is right in believing Trump shouldn’t be permanently banned from Facebook. In fact, he should never have been banned at all. I was banned from Facebook myself before Trump ever entered office. I wasn’t told why and I didn’t ask. Zuckenberg is a jerk with an ego as big as a nebula, and I look forward to the day his leprous enterprise ceases to exist.
I do take issue with Freddie’s talk of Trump’s “despotic” language concerning the 2020 election. It’s not despotic to complain that you only lost an election due to voter fraud when there is good evidence that is the case. And it is simply not true that the courts have never supported his claims. See the February report by Matthew Vadum, “Trump Won Two-Thirds of Election Lawsuits Where Merits Considered.” (It was 15 out of 22 lawsuits at that time to be precise, a little over two thirds.) The shameless defenders of voting fraud have been so shrill and strident in their claims that it never existed that it seems even objective and well-informed journos like Freddie have been taken in by them.
Freddie has been taken in because the fraudsters got it established that anyone who observed the election was rigged, was guilty of domestic terrorism. This was in itself state terrorism and we are seeing Trump’s lawyers being picked off Russian style one by one with FBI raids etc to intimidate all lawyers from ever representing Trump. No-one dares point any of this out because America is now a one party state, a police state.
I was asked to join Facebook as part of a group & the second time I must have signed in wrong & now I’m banned-me & Trump!
But, But, But….Trump!!! There’s your counter-argument.
Yip, whatever happened to ‘I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it’.
Bill Bryson put it as ‘I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to be a complete a*s hole.’
Interesting discussion.
The problem, though, is still the lack of regulation that social media enjoy.
“In my opinion, Section 230 protects the platforms more than the users. Legal immunity for social media companies does not protect individual users the way people think it does. It protects tech companies and interactive computer services that host any type of third party content from getting sued.” (from ruby media group)
Social media has regulation they enjoy, which protects them.
The issue is they are now the Virtual ‘Town Square’ IN FACT, and so should fall under the first amendment, but instead are regulated like a private golf club. Facebook needs breaking up like ATT was – it is a monopoly, and thus is not a private gold club.
It seems that censorship evolved around the claim that Russia caused a Trump win by disinformation on social media. Thus, we must stop such awful disinformation (because it allowed the wrong person to win an election). To my mind we are deluged with various pieces of misinformation all the time, yet we can sort it all. Then somehow we have hate speech, or hateful speech that we can likely ignore as well – turn the page, change the channel. Then there is excitement to riot or some such – that somehow we can fuel a revolution but only those approved (by our masters) revolutions. The social media platforms need to be carriers not arbiters of speech. If it’s not illegal, it posts despite being angry, wrong, mean, whatever. Users simply ignore what they dislike and can evaluate information as they please.
Yes, speech should only have to be lawful, not what is acceptable to a certain mindset which is able to use the words hate and harm to eliminate its political opponents. It was chilling listening to Mrs Stephen Kinnock justifying what they are doing. She said they are “keeping people safe.” Even Orwell didn’t think of that one.
As a thinking person, I actually agreed with some of Trump’s views, some of which seemed not only correct, but obvious.
I could never support him as a political leader, however, as doing so would be equivalent to saying “lying is OK”. It’s not.
And saying “his opponents have also lied” doesn’t make lying OK. Especially when one (as has been said of Trump) “lies as he breathes“.
As that great Cistercian, Arnaud Amalric said “Kill them all, let God sort them out”.*
(*During the Albigensian Crusade).
“Nuke them till they glow, shoot them in the dark”*
(*some Far Right Loon during the Iran hostage situation)
I don’t much bother about the rights and wrongs of it – if it means I hear/see/read less of him, I’m happier that way. Martyrs can seek out his dim pronouncements if they wish.
Ah yes, the old head up ones @rse ploy guarantees happiness.
What about if this was about someone you agreed with?
Maybe free speech that is just for those you agree with isn’t so ‘free’ after all?
The author clings to the trick of mixing up 2 clearly different elements: Political allegiance and legal transgression.
Disgusting as Donald Drumpf is (and that speaks to my political allegiance), his political stance was never the reason justifying his banning from social media. He was banned because he abused his access to social media to promote violence.
So no, the author’s argument holds no water – just like Trump, I will be risking being censored only if I actually were to violate the law (e.g. inciting violence), which I have no plans to do anyways. There are no grounds for me to fear censorship over my political allegiance.
“He was banned because he abused his access to social media to promote violence.” Which he never did, You Identified His Words As Promoting Violence, very different to what he actually said. But as this is the Nu-Liberal criteria for establishing ‘Truth’ (one’s truth) this is enough for you to ‘burn the witch’.
He told his followers to take back your country from the lying Democrats, who have illegally stolen the election. Was that an encouragement to write their congressmen and turn out for the next vote?
show me the quote that promotes violence. I’ll wait. Groups like antifa and BLM, meanwhile, not to mention a significant number of Dems in Congress HAVE called for violence. The sitting VP was pushing a bail fund for looters and rioters. Yet, no platform has taken even the slightest step against those.
There are no grounds for me to fear censorship over my political allegiance. Tell that to the multiple medical professionals who have been silenced across FB and LinkedIn for daring to buck the preferred narrative. Tell that to the multiple people and groups who’ve been deplatformed for not genuflecting to leftist belief. This isn’t about Trump, per see; if this can be done to a president, it can surely be done to the proles.
Is sad that only extremist right -wingers are fighting against New World Oder,which Coronavirus was invented for. Trump did one hell of a lot of damage, Who ‘s the great protagonist ideal to judge whether unacceptable views should be banned on Social media?
I believe UnHerd should be forced to publish my opinions on the front page, and should stop filtering below the line comments for rude words and randomly deleting them. Anything else is naked censorship.
Nobody is interested in your opinions. However, lots of concerned “deplorables” were interested in Trump’s.
Then they can read them on his new website. So-called conservatives complaining about what private companies do with their property deserve the sort of reductio argument I gave above.
(There’s a reasonable argument that companies lower down the protocol stack shouldn’t be allowed to censor as readily, i.e. your ISP shouldn’t cut you off for being a deplorable, not least because they’d have to be monitoring your traffic to tell you are one. But there are plenty of other websites.)
Despite disagreeing with almost everything you say, I would much prefer to read what you think than to have someone else decide I’m not allowed to.