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).
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.
The opening of CPAC 2017 featured a speech by American Conservative Union President Dan Schneider, who warned of the dangers of conservatives and the Republican Party being infiltrated by elements of the Alt-Right.
Last week, CPAC seemed to have scored a coup in landing provocateur extraordinaire Milo Yiannopoulos as the "Conservative" Political Action Committee's keynote speaker. Yiannopoulos was slated to speak about free speech on campus, as he was at the center of the UC Berkeley riots at the start of February.
Many new to the political scene in support of President Donald Trump seemed ideologically enamored to Milo's in-your-face publicity stunts and alt-right rhetoric. Whether this episode establishes the high mark for Alt-Right infiltration of Republicans or it underlines the tension between the establishment GOP and the so-called "basket of deplorables" nationalist populist wing remains to be seen.
After the University of California anti-free speech riots, the Mayor of Berkeley tried to blame the unrest on the speaker Milo Yiannapoulos by smearing him as a white supremacist.
Several hours later, Mayor Jesse Arreguin revised his statement to label Yiannopoulis as a "white nationalist" in lieu of a "white supremacist". Neither smear seems to fit the libertarian leaning, flamboyantly homosexual Trump supporter.
But claiming that Yiannopoulos might have engaged in "hate speech" had he been given the chance to speak seems to be the key for liberals to excuse mob violence to silence dissent at the supposed home of the free speech movement.
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).
