Under the auspices of truth, harmony, and justice, in my novel, When Love Speaks, the government threatens to shut down any publisher or broadcaster who will not censor their own for printing or airing anti-establishment rhetoric. If this sounds familiar, it’s because, as Glen Greenwald tells us, that’s exactly what the Israeli and US governments are doing to Facebook.

US senators call for laws that would ruin the internet

Irish journalist Danielle Ryan also reports US Senator Chris Murphy tweeted that hate-speech instigators like Alex Jones use sites like Facebook to “tear our nation apart.” He called on tech companies to “do more” than take down controversial websites, adding that democracy’s very survival depends on privately led censorship.

Ryan warns us Alex Jones may be among the first, but he won’t be the last. His ban is about normalizing internet censorship and controlling truth.

A leaked memo drafted by US Senator Mark Warner, Ryan adds, proposes regulating social media. Warner wants to protect consumers by forcing Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, and others to verify identities and locations of accounts, to do more to determine which accounts are “inauthentic,” and to “label” bot accounts.

Worse, in a proposal only a nonpracticing Harvard lawyer could devise, he wants to make social media platforms liable for state-law torts (defamation, false light, public disclosure of private facts). Under Warner’s proposed law, if Alex Jones libels Hillary Clinton in a YouTube video, then Clinton could sue YouTube and its parent company, Alphabet, for damages.

Such a law would ruin the internet. It would make platforms and content providers legally and financially responsible for anything anyone says or does using their services. Courts would be clogged with disgruntled corporations suing YouTube for negative product reviews. Pissed-off parents would sue Facebook for high-school rumors. Politicians would sue Apple for dishonest podcasts. Every dollar these companies make would be spent litigating. Even if they won every case, those kinds of operating costs would finish YouTube and Facebook. Competing platforms would never stand a chance.

Using Facebook to Censor controversial content

Facebook and YouTube do not have to provide contemptible trolls like Alex Jones a platform. Tolerating free speech is not the same as the right to a microphone.

But one cannot help but wonder if the government is forcing Facebook to do its dirty work. How else does one explain Mark Zuckerberg’s change of heart?

On July 18, 2018, Facebook’s CEO defended allowing InfoWars and Holocaust deniers on his platform. He said remained committed to keeping Facebook an open platform.

“As abhorrent as some of this content can be,” Zuckerberg said in his July interview, “I do think that it gets down to this principle of giving people a voice.”

Barely a week later, Facebook banned InfoWars and Alex Jones. A company spokesperson told journalists that Jones and InfoWars violated their terms and conditions. In other words, Facebook banned both for hate speech—a term so baffling, convoluted, and presumptive that neither Zuckerberg nor the US Supreme Court can agree on its definition.

The First Amendment keeps the American government from censoring its citizens. But if Facebook won’t stand up for its own rights, how can we expect them to support ours? Has Zuckerberg become the establishment’s stooge?