THE RISE OF FASCIST SOCIAL MEDIA

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines fascism as: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control. 

The phrase "dictatorial control" is important for the case that I am going to make about fascism in social media. The word "dictatorial" means "of or relating to a dictator," and a dictator is "one ruling in an absolute and often oppressive way."

In 2020, social media has seen a rise in the number of autocratic events of censorship. The two social media outlets that I am going to focus on are Facebook and Twitter. 

Background

Facebook is a semi-private curated blogging platform where you, the user, share information at your leisure. The public part of Facebook is in Facebook Groups. With a group, outside people who are not privy to your "Facebook Wall" will join your group and establish a communal discourse. This can be private, by invitation only, or public. The Facebook is auth-walled so that you must login with an account to view any content from any user, even if they post "publicly."

Twitter is a public chatroom platform where your account is the chatroom. Anyone, with or without an account, can view the content from any other person's account unless they configure their chatroom to be "protected." This is referred to as "protect my tweets" on the platform.

Both of these platforms are Web based and are addressable using the publicly available Internet. They are used by billions of people around the world and are subjected to the legal jurisdiction of the United States of America and the State of California. Other countries have forced their jurisdiction onto these platforms by threatening to "block" their access to people in such jurisdictions. 

The companies that operate these platform are publicly traded on the US-based Nasdaq (FB) and the New York Stock Exchange (TWTR). Being publicly traded they must report financial information and business operations to their stock holders at regular meetings.

The vast majority of the revenue claimed by these companies is generated through advertising and sponsorships. People use the platform to read information, companies try to pair that information to their products and reach interested potential consumers. 

The Events

Advance NZ on Facebook

The result means the party will not enter parliament. Two days before the election, Facebook removed Advance NZ’s page from its platform for spreading Covid-19 misinformation.

“They are cynical, opportunistic narcissists and this is absolutely what they deserved,” said Emma Wehipeihana, a political commentator for 1 News, in election night remarks that were widely applauded on social media. [1]

This event happened around October 15, 2020 [2]. Apparently the postings by Advance NZ were so influential and offensive that they had to be silenced to prevent anyone from believing them. 

Did Facebook explain why they removed the Advance NZ page? Is there a published set of rules that can be applied to any page to determine if the page should be removed?  Facebook claimed that Advance NZ's page was posting "misinformation" about Covid-19 and that would cause "imminent physical harm."

Facebook's rules [3] suggest: "The goal of our Community Standards has always been to create a place for expression and give people a voice." That blue text leads to [4].

Facebook is not a government but it is a platform for voices around the world. We moderate content shared by billions of people and we do so in a way that gives free expression maximum possible range. But there are critical exceptions: we do not, for example, allow content that could physically or financially endanger people, that intimidates people through hateful language, or that aims to profit by tricking people using Facebook.

Which people is Facebook protecting? Do they take down posts from people who write inflamed counter arguments to racist and otherwise derogatory posts? Juvenile behavior aside, what Facebook does claim is to abide by the ICCPR:

We look for guidance in documents like Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which set standards for when it’s appropriate to place restrictions on freedom of expression. ICCPR maintains that everyone has the right to freedom of expression — and restrictions on this right are only allowed when they are “provided by law and are necessary for: (a) the respect of the rights or reputations of others; (b) for the protection of national security or of the public order, or of public health or morals.”

In the case of Advance NZ, the ICCPR article 18(b) applies because of their misinformed posts about Covid-19 as they were related to public health. Facebook doesn't say that explicitly, they just suggest the page violated their policies, which was a decision adjudicated by their "15,000 person" [2] strong army of moral police. That army sounds more like the old "Moral Majority" [5].

Yet, does claiming that "5G is a bioweapon that causes symptoms-of or infection-by Covid-19" really truly harm public health? Exactly how many people believe that rhetoric? Facebook claims to engender a platform of free expression, so long as it doesn't "intimidate" or "silence" other users. I don't see how Advance NZ violated their policies so remarkably that they deserved censorship. Were they trying to turn a profit by tricking users? We know that never ever happens on Facebook, or at least not without Facebook turning a profit from it (shameless jab at advertisers).

President Donald Trump on Facebook and Twitter

The story starts with this mysterious laptop recovered by an unknown repair person claiming there is incriminating emails between Hunter Biden and Vadym Pozharskyi [6].

The Post story hinges on an email message from Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to Ukrainian gas company Burisma, thanking his colleague Hunter Biden for "giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent some time together.”

The pedigree of this information is in question, and the FBI has reviewed it [6]. If this was anything interesting in any way, The Bureau would be acting on it. So it's just a big pot of heresay and emails, again. 

Yet, Facebook and Twitter both censor the story. Facebook claims [7]:

Facebook was the first to take action, with communications manager Andy Stone saying the platform was applying its viral misinformation policy to limit the spread of the article and allow its third-party fact checkers to evaluate it. [7]

There is no such policy at Facebook given the information they publish about their censorship policies [3]. This would suggest that Andy Stone and his Moral Majority took unilateral action to remove the post and discourage its ingestion by the Facebook community.

Twitter approached the story differently by barring users from sharing links to it in tweets and direct messages, but without informing users that the company had determined that the article violated the platform’s policy on hacked materials. [7]

At least Jack Dorsey was critical of how Twitter handled the decision, but it doesn't excuse the blatant censorship. This looked more like a mob-ruled conspiracy to prevent negative information about Joe Biden, the Presidential nominee for the Democratic Party.

I wonder, is it possible to value information as a commodity, and then to control its value? If so, then could one argue that both Facebook and Twitter were trying to manipulate the value of the information that they were censoring. This would be tantamount to market price fixing. Price fixing is one of the RICO statutes [8]. Racketeering is a slam-dunk for any company because that's how they stay in business. Create a racket to exploit consumers. That's business 101. Maybe that's 2 out of 3 statutes. Look for a third. Bribery is always a fun one to pursue because, how else do those politicians become so wealthy in office? 

Back to the story.

At MIT's EmTech on October 22nd, Parag Argawal, the CTO of Twitter, suggested in video that Twitter was actively engaged in fostering "Healthy Public Conversations." [10] That really sounds more like censorship 

Jack Dorsey's Twitter feed suggests that Twitter is actively investing in only 5 "open source architects, engineers, and designers" to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media [9]. Really? What kind of architects, Jack? Gothic? Medieval? Are you talking about information architects, such as the very same people who created the censorship platforms known as Twitter and Facebook? This is going to be a "standard" of content moderation? So these 5 people will decide a "standard" for 7.5 billion people? Wow, the fascist arrogance is astounding. 

I predict Parag's career at Twitter to be short. He makes short handed comments that negatively impact the company's technology vision:

3 - The traditionally slow and deliberate consensus-building approach to evolving standards might fail to keep up with a rapidly changing ecosystem and set of consumer needs. [11] (tweet from Dec 11, 2019 at 6:13 AM)

This comment truly astounds me. "What everyone thinks and has input on - so what, we need to move fast, so I am going to decide." So says every dictator...

Wrap It Up

I don't condone any sort of hate or X-supremacist rhetoric in any blog, social media, conversations, scratching on bathroom stalls, or sky-flying billboards. We should all endeavor to express our likes and dislikes in a way that is intellectual and representative of our times. Nobody is made better or worst or more entitled than any other person. We are all made randomly and have no control over how we start this life. Our only metric of value is in our actions and how we have pursued our lives. 

The argument around "Social Media" was the same arguments about Network News (NNTP) back in the early 90s. There is nothing special about Facebook or Twitter, they are just network news all over again. Someone of you may have been avid readers of alt.conspiracy or alt.sex, and most of the older computing people from Gen X have seen the RN classifieds for buying and selling their junk. Back then news trolls would harass people and post junk that was offensive to some. We all learned to ignore it.

Trolls have always lived on The Net. They will always be here, no matter now much fascist regime-ism takes hold of the media space. The freedom of expression through written words or speech is important. Unless someone is making specific allegations that are false about another person or entity, so what. If you think Covid-19 mutates pigs into flying buffalo, then so what, nobody should be harmed by that. 

We are smart people who can filter out the flotsam of a failed psyche crying out for attention and aide. The government does not need to be our nanny. If Twitter or Facebook censor content, then so be it, they are a private organization, right? Well, Facebook is. Twitter, on the other hand, endeavors to be a public commodity of news and information, which smells ripe for regulation. Like I suggested earlier, short career...

In closing, I leave you with [12] "Technology-facilitated Societal Consensus" and [13] "Consensus-based ranking of Wikipedia topics" and [14] "The role of conflict in determining consensus on quality in Wikipedia articles" and [15] "Understanding and coping with extremism in an online collaborative environment: A data-driven modeling". These readings, and their references, should be required readings for anyone at the executive level of a large social media commodity.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/19/why-new-zealand-rejected-populist-ideas-other-nations-have-embraced

[2] https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/facebook-takes-down-advance-new-zealands-page/ar-BB1a29zi

[3] https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/

[4] https://about.fb.com/news/2018/08/hard-questions-free-expression/

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority

[6] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/521045-trailing-in-polls-trump-campaign-resurrects-hunter-biden-attacks

[7] https://thehill.com/policy/technology/521277-facebook-twitter-new-york-post-election-night-concerns

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act

[9] https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766091475480576

[10] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/measuring_healthy_conversation.html

[11] https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/twitter-is-funding-a-group-to-create-an-open-and-decentralised-standard-for-social-media-7771371.html

[12] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3314183.3323451

[13] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3106426.3106529

[14] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2491055.2491067

[15] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5360246/