Some consider the Nation’s Capital as “Fantasyland on the Potomac”. Other outsiders are “Fed Up” with the Federal City. It's better to consider D.C. as “the District of Calamity” (sic).
Prominent conservative voices in social media, such as Diamond and Silk and Dan Bongino, have vociferously voiced outrage that Big Internet has banned them as being unsafe for the social media community because of their outspoken ideological opinions. This parallels YouTube demonetizing many of Dennis Prager's popular Prager U videos because the conservative views expressed did not sync with the progressive views of their internet overlords. And Twitter is infamous for shadow banning conservatives, even Senator Ted Cruz, without recourse or equal application against outrageous leftist Twits. Diamond and Silk, who gained fame through their vigorous defense of then Presidential candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, did not silently take this rough trade from Facebook. On Fox and Friends, Diamond and Silk postulated that Mark Zuckerberg needed to "[S]uck it up, buttercup" and accept diverse viewpoints and freedom of speech on its social network, just as the small Indiana pizzeria would be forced to cater a same-sex wedding despite their religious objections to the ceremony. Alas, Diamond and Silk have a weak case in a court of law. Without meandering into the details of RFRA and First Amendment religious liberty, same-sex marriage proponents could point to civil rights legislation which the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Harris claim a right to dignity for that class. What protected class can Diamond and Silk rightfully claim against Facebook? However, in the court of public opinion, Facebook engaging in ideological viewpoint discrimination could be a compelling case for action. Does MySpace mean anything to Mark Zuckerberg? That was a social media precursor to Facebook, but when it stopped being cool, it became ghost of itself and a dark web conduit. Facebook is much bigger and is receiving congressional scrutiny. Between viewpoint discrimination and revelations of data mining, shareholders should be concerned if Facebook were to become a fraction of its former self. Facebook has ceased to be a mainly youth oriented site. Adults may well chafe at having their lives data sold by the social media company. But for motivated conservatives, this cyber censorship may well have this active demographic find alternatives to speak freely, like on GAB.
Of late, there has been a growing realization that our internet overlords are controlling the public square. In 2016, Facebook faced some consternation when the social media giant's curation of news in the sidebar consistently slighted conservative news stories. Twitter took to banning some who defied the politically correct weltenanschauung that our cyber elites favor in their posts. Milo Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter for posting alt-right opinions while similar sort of liberal content continued unabated. It is not uncommon for conservative sites to experience shadow-blocking, which covertly thwarts wider dissemination of posts through censoring algorithms. Platforms can summarily block access based on anonymous, spurious complaints, and due to the Star Chamber handling of such charges, it is almost impossible to protest much less redress any alleged issues. To counter efforts of cyber-censorship, Andrew Torba et ali. created GAB during the summer of 2016. As a social media platform, GAB exhorted users to #SpeakFreely and vowed not to censor posts unless it advocated violence or child pornography which was against laws.
As a start up, GAB not only faced typical challenges of funding and creating a market, but faced difficulties from a politically correct driven cyber community. GAB encountered tremendous difficulties from Apple to have a i-phone mobile app approved because of the Speak Freely philosophy. Even after GAB successfully developed and started distributing an Android mobile app, there are concerns that the GAB appl will be removed from the Play Store because users might post objectionable contention on GAB's platform.
Alas, it is not only technology giants who are exerting their power as internet overlords. The latest controversy involves a fat meme posted from a neo nazi (who has been banned from other sites and platforms). Torba politely responded to the post that it was a violation of the Terms of Service and asked that it be taken down. This uncharacteristic action roiled users who wrapped themselves around the mantra of #SpeakFreely. Torba later clarified that Asia Registry, demanded that the post be banned or else GAB's registry would be revoked. The GAB leadership is currently scrambling to address the issue.
It is ironic that a fat joke would be used as the linchpin to destroy GAB, however that is the cause celebre which is being exploited by small time internet player Asia Registry, but they have the power. Yet is mirrors the other tech giants efforts to obstruct alternatives to their virtual monopolies by using politically correct Trojan Horses. In an age in which alleged micro-agressions, such as a Hobby Lobby customer is triggered by the "racist" notion of using cotton flowers in a vase, that the left countenances bilious blurtations when it tracks the progressive agenda of the moment. Such in loco parentis progressive sensibilities prompted a Zerohedge pundit to wonder if Internet behemoths are acting as colonial powers.
UPDATE: September 19, 2017 GAB was successful in finding other registrar for the domain which would not play games with them.
Gab is a new micoblogging site which was started in the summer of 2016 as conservative voices experienced cyber-censorship about content from social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter. Gab wants to create a cyber community which users can speak freely and exercise their own judgment to filter content.
Gab started with a beta platform geared towards personal computers. However, since the growth in social media is associated with mobile internet applications, Gab has sought to get approval from Apple to have their app approved to be available in Apple app store.
Because Gab encourages members to #SpeakFreely, they do not want to censor content created by Gab users, as long it conforms to US law and the Constitution regarding obscenity and pornography. In rare instances, the Gab platform would allow for legal pornography as long as it was tagged #NSFW (not safe for work). But this loophole created the first objection for the Apple App Review team. To resolve this, Gab linked their EULA agreement, albeit outside of the app. The allowed for the second rejection, which was easily abated.
What has raised eyebrows is the tardy and hypocritical third rejection by the app team. Ordinarily, apps are evaluated within 24 hours. For Gab's third app submission, it took 17 days. In addition, it was rejected on the grounds that "We found references to religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, or other targeted groups that could be offensive to many users."
So Gab is supposed to play nanny to user epithets and ideas which an aggrieved internet denizen could find offensive. But Gab allows its users to filter out content which they do not want to see, but the powers that be in Cupertino do not want their i-Phone/i-Pad users to be scandalized by material in Gab (which they could filter out themselves).
Is the same stringent Cupertino standard applied to Madonna's post Women's March musings?
Wonder why? Is Twitter going to have their app taken away for the rude ravings of an aged Material Girl who creates controversy on social media to seem contemporary?
Gab CEO Andrew Torba wonders if the third rejection of Gab's app was timed to coincide with President Trump's first full day in office and was meant to sent a message. Torba asserted:
"This clear double standard against us is potentially politically motivated and clearly targeted. When you actively search for something on a user generated website, chances are you're going to find what you are looking for."
Progressives sought to kill Gab by claiming that it was only for the alt-right and that it lacked diversity, which fails when one considers that Gabs leadership team is comprised of an American Christian, a Turkish Muslim Kurd and an Indian Hindu. Since the slimming was unsuccessful, it seems that progressive companies are seeking to deny Gab from tools to grow their user base by any means necessary.
With the shadow-blocking and capricious shunnings by big social media, those who want to share opinions which challenge the standard assumptions of progressive elites, they may look to social media alternatives such as Gab. Alas, Apple continues to make access restricted inside the walled garden
In 2016, there were many controversies about cyber-censorship. Some social justice warriors will fret about the Great Firewall of China. But there are examples of being cyber censorship which are much closer to home. These are not instances of benign curation, such as Apple blocking Flash media links because the media might not display properly in the Cupertino created cyber walled garden that Apple owners expect. These are instances in which a cyber nanny decides what content should be seen.
Facebook was called out for its biased curating of hot topics to favor liberal sensibilities. While it is hard to believe that well informed people consider Facebook their primary news source, The Guardian asserted that Facebook is arguably the most important distributor of news online. But a former Facebook editor revealed that many times conservative news topics did not trend on Facebook’s sidebar because the liberal leaning staff did not recognize news topics (like CPAC) or held an animus against conservatives (like Ted Cruz).
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
In response to the conservative outcry, Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a "Conservative Summit" at the company's Menlo Park, California headquarters with right leaning luminaries such as Dana Perino and Glenn Beck to discuss the matter.
While some leading conservatives declined to participate in a so called Facebook photo-op, the social media service subsequently announced some sweeping changes meant to ameliorate the media mess. Although Facebook's internal report denied any ideological bias, they acknowledge limitations of their efforts. Facebook stopped relying on RSS feeds for curation. Instead it would use a select group of publications to discern if a story should be trending news.
Another instance of Facebook acting like an overzealous Cyber Nanny is how pages of content creators are being capriciously unpublished. Close to ten years ago, Facebook established Fan Pages that are separate from a personal page, which attracted eyeballs for various interests and business (as well as generating ad income for Facebook). But recently a group of 2200 content creators banded together under the banner of #powertothepages to protest the byzantine process to objecting to content censorship by Facebook.
To try to explain how Republican Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, many stunned progressives sought to blame "Fake News". Prior to the surprising Election 2016 results, President Obama opined that we need a curating function to deal with the wild west of information flow. This may sound reasonable to hurried casual current event followers to have a source that dictates what is real news. But who decides and on what basis are better questions.
Bloomberg View author Noah Feldman hopes that the news market can correct itself, but that the state might have to step in. Obviously, the journalist does not appreciate the import of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no laws..abridging the freedom of speech, impeding the freedom of the press..."
Some social media companies seem to have taken matters into their own hands before the state imposes censorship. Twitter has unceremoniously shuttered some users who spout ideas that do not appeal to the powers that be, such as Milo Yiannopoulos. While Twitter claimed that @nero violated their Terms of Service with his unflattering exchanges with Ghostbusters' actress Leslie Jones, his rhetoric hardly seemed over the top, yet Twitter CEO permanently banned Milo from the social media site because the exchanges inspired hate mail towards the Hollywood luminary.
Although efforts to #FreeMilo failed to succeed with Twitter, Milo did not make out so bad as Yiannopoulos scored a $250,000 book deal for his memoirs on the social media ban. Others facing social media suspensions are not as handsomely rewarded. A social media site can lock an account on an unsuspecting user and the only established objection process is appealing to an automated digital Big Brother. If the Cyber Nannies look with favor upon the frantic plea, the user is urged to adhere to the TOS, without knowing exactly what was the infraction, It seems that many progressive activists are eager to claim abuse and a cautious social media company will cover their bases by proactively locking controversial accounts.
Liberal Cyberbullies also ape invoke tactics gleaned from lawfare. In the run up to the election, a liberal lawyer objected to a political cartoon of Democrat Presidential nominee sporting an orange "pant suit" behind bars with a tag line "Perhaps Hillary Clinton looks best in an orange outfit." The self proclaimed attorney insisted that she would sue for libel as "destroying a person's reputation with lies and gossip are blatant libel."
Of course, in a rational world, this off-kilter attorney had no standing to sue and even if that weren't the case, the standard for about prominent figures is an extremely high bar, particularly involving political speech in the run up to an election. Still, knowing the legal system, it was prudent to take time to document everything in case a nuisance lawsuit was filed. Rather that file suspected abuse charges against this budding cyber bully, it seemed better to give the liberal loon a wide berth.
Another modus operandi by micro-blogging platforms is to shadow block as a means of cyber-censorship. Posts which contain hashtags or terms which offend the powers that be are effectively blacklisted by being published but kept from going into search features and is hidden from others' timelines. Twitter has confirmed that it shadow blocks. Twitter does not impose this stealth ban only against spammers but also targets the alt-right, politically incorrect or cultural libertarians. It again begs the question about curation on who decides and on what basis as to posts that are suppressed.
There has been some push back against cyber censorship. In August 2016, Andrew Torba created Gab.ai, a micro-blogging platform which allows for all points of view and champions the principle to #SpeakFreely. Even though Gab is still in beta, it has over 100,000 users and is a top 3,000 internet site, even as it is currently invitation only.
Some have suggested to challenge censoring social media platforms by investigating and litigation the violations of the terms of service by the internet companies. Frankly, that seems like a fool's errand. These cyber bureaucrats can claim TOS violations and unless it is a high profile case like Milo Yiannopoulos or James Woods, they will not feel compelled to respond. While they should champion free speech, the First Amendment is a limitation on the government not a private corporation.
Recently, it has become apparent that some content has been stealth banned too close to home.. Although it is praiseworthy to invoke the Ignatian principle of Presupposition by giving one's antagonist the benefit of the doubt. But using analytics and comparing similar web pages, it is dubious that the stealth banning is not content curation for its viewpoint, not because of obscenity, spamming or harassment (which would be clear TOS objections).
It is disheartening to know that Facebook Content Creators can be deprived of their sources of income by vague complaints made by anonymous sources, and there is an impersonal automated system to object to these page pull downs. But it reinforces the wisdom of not depending only on one platform. It is important to find work arounds and not be at the whims of abstract internet overlords. Methodologies can be tweaked and new ways of getting the word out can be developed to speak freely.
In this era of hyper polarization, there are going to be efforts to block viewpoints which challenge progressive proclivities. To often, the silent majority has let things go in order to tend to their own personal interests. Between technological advances and the entrenchment of liberals within the apparatus of government, the levers of culture and "our betters" in academia and corporate boards, free speech for conservative and traditional values could be crushed.
This will not stand in the District of Calamity (sic).
