Nach der Wahl ist vor der Wahl - US-Politik nach Trump

Congress Escalates Pressure on Tech Giants to Censor More, Threatening the First Amendment

In their zeal for control over online speech, House Democrats are getting closer and closer to the constitutional line, if they have not already crossed it.

Zitat von Glenn Greenwald - 20.02.21

For the third time in less than five months, the U.S. Congress has summoned the CEOs of social media companies to appear before them, with the explicit intent to pressure and coerce them to censor more content from their platforms. On March 25, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will interrogate Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebooks’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai at a hearing which the Committee announced will focus “on misinformation and disinformation plaguing online platforms.”

The Committee’s Chair, Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), and the two Chairs of the Subcommittees holding the hearings, Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), said in a joint statement that the impetus was “falsehoods about the COVID-19 vaccine” and “debunked claims of election fraud.” They argued that “these online platforms have allowed misinformation to spread, intensifying national crises with real-life, grim consequences for public health and safety,” adding: “This hearing will continue the Committee’s work of holding online platforms accountable for the growing rise of misinformation and disinformation.”

House Democrats have made no secret of their ultimate goal with this hearing: to exert control over the content on these online platforms. “Industry self-regulation has failed,” they said, and therefore “we must begin the work of changing incentives driving social media companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation.” In other words, they intend to use state power to influence and coerce these companies to change which content they do and do not allow to be published.

[...]

This dynamic has become so common that Democrats now openly pressure Silicon Valley companies to censor content they dislike. In the immediate aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot, when it was falsely claimed that Parler was the key online venue for the riot’s planning — Facebook, Google’s YouTube and Facebook’s Instagram were all more significant — two of the most prominent Democratic House members, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), used their large social media platforms to insist that Silicon Valley monopolies remove Parler from their app stores and hosting services:

[tweets]

Within twenty-four hours, all three Silicon Valley companies complied with these “requests,” and took the extraordinary step of effectively removing Parler — at the time the most-downloaded app on the Apple Store — from the internet. We will likely never know what precise role those tweets and other pressure from liberal politicians and journalists played in their decisions, but what is clear is that Democrats are more than willing to use their power and platforms to issue instructions to Silicon Valley about what they should and should not permit to be heard.

Leading liberal activists and some powerful Democratic politicians, such as then-presidential-candidate Kamala Harris, had long demanded former President Donald Trump’s removal from social media. After the Democrats won the White House — indeed, the day after Democrats secured control of both houses of Congress with two wins in the Georgia Senate run-offs — Twitter, Facebook and other online platforms banned Trump, citing the Capitol riot as the pretext.[...]

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Man kann sich darüber streiten, ob die Tech-Monopolisten - so wie Greenwald es hier andeutet - tatsächlich von der politischen Klasse dazu gezwungen werden müssen, sich ihrer Linie anzupassen, oder ob die offensichtlich recht herzliche Verbundenheit - insbesondere finanzieller, bzw. Partei- und Präsidentschaftswahlkampf-spenderischer Natur - eines großen Teils der milliardenschweren Silicon Valley Gemeinde mit dem neoliberalen demokratischen Parteiestablishment nicht ohnehin längst zu einer ideologischen Angleichung geführt hat, der man jetzt mit einer Mehrheit in beiden Häusern des US-Kongresses endlich freien Lauf lassen kann.

Aber in beiden Fällen kommt am Ende eine unheilige Allianz zwischen Großkapital und Staat dabei heraus, die man von "links"-liberaler Seite sicher aufs schärfste kritisieren würde, wenn nicht der eigene Wahlverein, sondern die politische Gegenseite das Weiße Haus und die Mehrheit in beiden Kammern des Parlaments besetzt hielte.

p.s.: Auch ein schöner Anlass für den "links"-liberalen twitter-Mob, Greenwald mal wieder als Faschismus-Apologeten und/oder als Agenten des Kreml-Satans hochzuempören:

Zitat von Glenn Greenwald

When it comes to censorship of politically adverse content, sometimes explicit censorship demands are unnecessary. Where a climate of censorship prevails, companies anticipate what those in power want them to do by anticipatorily self-censoring to avoid official retaliation. Speech is chilled without direct censorship orders being required.

That is clearly what happened after Democrats spent four years petulantly insisting that they lost the 2016 election not because they chose a deeply disliked nominee or because their neoliberal ideology wrought so much misery and destruction, but instead, they said, because Facebook and Twitter allowed the unfettered circulation of incriminating documents hacked by Russia. Anticipating that Democrats were highly likely to win in 2020, the two tech companies decided in the weeks before the election — in what I regard as the single most menacing act of censorship of the last decade — to suppress or outright ban reporting by The New York Post on documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop that raised serious questions about the ethics of the Democratic front-runner for president. That is a classic case of self-censorship to please state officials who wield power over you.

He really doesn't give a fuck.

Amazon sperrt seine Server für Parler? Warum nicht Kabelnetzbetreiber dazu bringen, Fernsehsender wie Fox News und andere Sprachrohre des politischen Gegners nicht mehr auszustrahlen? - Denken sich die Demokraten im Kongress.

Herr Greenwald, der alte "Faschismus"-Relativierer, hat natürlich was dagegen:

House Democrats, Targeting Right-Wing Cable Outlets, Are Assaulting Core Press Freedoms

Democrats' justification for silencing their adversaries online and in media -- "they are spreading fake news and inciting extremism" -- is what despots everywhere say.

Zitat von Glenn Greenwald - 23.02.21

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday announced a February 24 hearing, convened by one of its sub-committees, entitled “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.” Claiming that “the spread of disinformation and extremism by traditional news media presents a tangible and destabilizing threat,” the Committee argues: “Some broadcasters’ and cable networks’ increasing reliance on conspiracy theories and misleading or patently false information raises questions about their devotion to journalistic integrity.”

[...]

Are there conspiracy theories and disinformation sometimes found on the conservative cable outlets which House Democrats want taken off the air? Of course there are: all media outlets disseminate conspiracy theories and fake news at times. MSNBC and CNN spent four years endorsing the most deranged conspiracy theory imaginable, one with very toxic roots in the Cold War: namely, the McCarthyite script that the Kremlin had taken over control of key U.S. institutions through sexual blackmail over the President, invasions into the nation’s heating system and electric grid, and criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the Trump campaign to hack into Democrats’ emails.

All of that was false, just as the one-month tale told over and over by the media about a pro-Trump mob murdering Brian Sicknick by bludgeoning him to death with a fire extinguisher was false — a story which remains unretracted or corrected by most who spread it.

Just imagine if, during the Trump years, the GOP Senate had abused its power to bully cable outlets into removing MSNBC from their platforms, or banning liberal journalists and activists from using social media platforms, on the grounds that they were spreading conspiracy theories and fake news. It is hard to overstate how extreme the rhetoric would have been that Trump and the Republicans were engaged in authoritarian measures to destroy free speech and a free press.

And I would have joined in those denunciations (as I did with the Assange prosecution): as much as I loathe so much of what those outlets do, it is not the role of the government to regulate let alone silence them. The corrective is for journalists to rebuild trust and faith with the public by exposing their misinformation and proving to the public that they will do accurate and reliable reporting regardless of which faction is aggrandized or angered.

But corporate media outlets and Democrats (excuse the redundancy) who spent the last four years posturing as virulent defenders of press freedoms never meant it. Like so much of what they claimed to believe, it was fraudulent. The proof is that they are now mute, if not supportive, as Democrats use their status as majority party to launch an assault against press freedoms far more egregious than anything Trump got close to doing.

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Ich wollt es irgendwie vom doch sehr auf Biden hin formulierten POTUS-Thread abgrenzen.

Wir können das hier natürlich auch veröden lassen und dann dort weiter über die Demokraten und ihren neoliberalen Korpo-"Faschismus" herziehen.

Zitat von Schilliplus

Trump heute Abend live bei den Rep-Ultras ...

(Trump speaks at CPAC in first post-White House appearance - youtube)

Das ist selbst für Mr Orange die unterste Schublade.

Entweder ist er schon so durchgeknallt, dass er tatsächlich denkt er sei irgendwie immer noch Präsident, und die Welt außerhalb der Irren da im Publikum hätte es bloß noch nicht verstanden, oder er will tatsächlich nochmal antreten.