A free and open exchange of truth, which once one of the hallmarks of Western civilization, it is now increasingly under attack from a radicalized Left bent on quashing all dissent.
In the pre-Internet era, this might have been accomplished by burning books, smashing printing presses, and arresting those daring to say publicly that the emperor is buck naked.
Today, however, technology giants such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter have effective, high-tech means — often subtle, occasionally blatant — of silencing those who challenge the received wisdom, including journalists, scientists, and even a sitting president of the United States.
The process of deciding which articles, social-media posts, videos, and other electronic media to retain, delete, promote, and so on is known as content moderation. Practically every electronic platform engages in it to one degree or another, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill.
"Not all moderation is bad," David Greene, civil liberties director at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), said in an interview with The New American. A conservative website is likely to prohibit users from posting articles favoring socialism. A website devoted to knitting will probably take down posts about weightlifting. Most respectable sites will try to remove content that is obscene or threatens others with violence.
The problem, of course, is that every decision about content is subjective. What one person views as a reasonable decision, another considers unacceptable.
The issue is magnified by the fact that moderation decisions are often shrouded in secrecy. Google, for example, maintains secret blacklists of content that may not be included in its news feeds or shown in YouTube videos. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter frequently take down content or ban users entirely with, at best, a message saying their content has run afoul of the platforms’ terms of service. Appealing such decisions is cumbersome, time-consuming, and frequently futile.
Although many of the high-profile examples of Big Tech censorship involve conservatives, according to Greene, research shows that conservatives aren’t disproportionately censored on the Internet. Even if that is true, the Internet is one of the few ways conservatives have of reaching a large number of people. If a liberal is squelched on one platform, he still has the mainstream media, Hollywood, numerous other platforms, and powerful politicians and activists to spread his message. If a conservative or libertarian is censored on Facebook, he will have to work many times harder to connect with his audience.
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