George Orwell, journalist and author of “1984”
“Big Tech is not the Ministry of Truth.”
Or at least, so says the Attorney General of Alabama who has invited citizens to file formal complaints if they have been censored on social media.
“It should concern us all when platforms that hold such tremendous power and influence over information wield that power in contradiction of—and with undisguised disdain for—the foundational American principles of free speech and freedom of the press,” says Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall. “The censorship campaign currently being waged by giant corporate oligarchs like Facebook and Twitter is, in a word, un-American.”
You may recall that in Orwell’s novel 1984, the Ministry of Truth controls news, entertainment, education, and the arts. Of course, truth is only what the ministry says it is. Speaking up for some idea that is not “true” is punishable by death or indefinite imprisonment.
But it’s just a novel. It may go without saying, but here in the US at least, nobody’s life is on the line and nobody is headed for Siberia for some crackpot Q-nut idea they want to shout to the world.
Yes, Facebook and Twitter have blocked or even banned a few US citizens who insist on deadly lies, for example, that the last election was fraudulent; that vaccines don’t work; that the virus is a hoax; that masks are the “mark of the beast;” and so on. Facebook and Twitter are trying to apply a standard of human dignity and provable truth through their terms of service.
Don’t like it? Fine. Go to the competition. There are dozens of new social media platforms, according to a July 2021 article in Forbes. You don’t even have to pay for a subscription. Jeez.
Of course, this is nothing new. Politicians have complained about the American media since the 1690s, but the courts have upheld the right of the media organization itself — and not the politician or your crazy uncle who writes loony letters to the editor — to decide what gets published and what doesn’t. It’s called socially responsible editing. Facebook and Twitter need more, not less, of that.
In the American system, anyone with the money or the vision or the guts to go out and start their own newspapers or web sites or broadcast stations is free to decide how it should operate. There are plenty of court cases that say exactly this, which is something that Marshall knows perfectly well.
George Orwell would LOL at the irony.
