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PHILADELPHIA, PA Freedom of expression is among the most important civil liberties enjoyed by members of a free society. By allowing these members to question authority, freedom of expression enables a community to check itself, to make sure that the ship is pointed in the right direction and to course-correct if needed. Not only is it vital for maintaining a healthy diversity of views and opinions, but it also allows peopleincluding journaliststo stand in the public square and share ideas and information with their fellow citizens.

Over the past year, and particularly over the past several months, we have seen more and more instances of major tech companies suppressing peoples speech through censorship, eroding their ability to express themselves by revoking access to this public square.

For example, mid-October, Twitter and Facebook coordinated a campaign to censor a New York Post article that exposed emails obtained from a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden, President Joe Bidens son. The two companies took steps to limit the spread of the story by warning users that the article may contain unsafe material and locking the Post out of its own Twitter account.

Regardless of whether the article which thus far has not been debunked, and parts of which have been corroborated contains truly critical information or not, it was (and may still be) an important and legitimate news story. For Twitter and Facebook to try to shut down the story in the run-up to a major presidential election was grossly irresponsible, and it shows a concerning willingness to silence journalists in the name of safety.

During a Senate hearing on censorship involving Facebook, Google and Twitter in late October, it was revealed that Google had been suppressing content from the World Socialist Website in its search results. The revelation backs up a 2019 Wall Street Journal investigation that detailed the use of algorithms by Google to alter users search results. It also reconfirms suspicions that the tech giant has been effectively censoring WSWS articlessuch as its critical coverage of the New York Times 1619 Projectdating as far back as 2017.

While using algorithms to dictate search results may make search engines more efficient and convenient for users, it also makes it much easier to manipulate results so that they suppress certain viewpoints or information. If people who rely heavily on the Internet for news or research (as, I assume, most of us do) are only exposed to select viewpoints and publications, it is far more difficult to determine facts and gain a well-rounded understanding of the world we live in.

In another instance, YouTube announced in December that it would begin removing videos and accounts of users claiming that there was widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential election and questioning the results.

It is highly unlikely that the election was stolen, and the lawsuits (pushed by both Donald Trump and his allies) to overturn the results have flopped. However, YouTubes decision to block this content limits users ability to assess the information presented and decide for themselves what they believe, in addition to further entrenching the beliefs of those convinced the election was stolen.

In the United States, free speech is often referenced in tandem with the First Amendment, which guarantees American citizens the right to freedom of religion, expression, assembly and petition by preventing Congress from restricting any one of these actions in public forums. But freedom of speech is more than just a law as defined under the First Amendment; it is a core tenet of liberal philosophy that promotes the right of the individual to access the public square of discourse. It is an important part of individual freedom and is invaluable in ensuring that the groups that hold the most power, be they governments or trillion-dollar industries, cannot control the discourse of their constituents.

A handful of private tech companies hold an ever-growing monopoly over the internet and social media, which have become the new public square in our society; the increasing normalization of political censorship by these organizations is a problem. Its true that the millions of people who share this public square should not and cannot be forced to listen to the ramblings of any yahoo standing on a soapbox, but to take away someones voice for the crime of sharing information that may be politically inconvenient, expressing views that may be controversial, or for simply being wrong only encourages more authoritarian behavior.

One might argue that if someone doesnt like the speech policies of one social media network or another, they can simply move to another or create their own. This is true, and that is exactly what happened earlier this year. Parler, a social network founded for the purpose of promoting freedom of expression, briefly became the most downloaded app in the country, with users jumping ship from Twitter and Facebook citing claims of censorship following Bidens presidential victory.

This was short-lived, though, as Parler was quickly booted from the internet after being removed from Apple and Googles app stores, as well as from Amazon Web Services, for a lack of moderation regarding content promoting the violent riots at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6. In contrast, similar content was also spreading across significantly larger networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, for weeks leading up to the Electoral College vote, but they faced no such action. Parler is now back online since striking a new deal with the Russian-owned DDos-Guard, after having spent a week struggling to find a new host.

So yes, you can jump to other social networks or even form your own if you disagree with the speech policies set by the largest companies in the world. But if your network does not abide by the standards of content moderation set by those companies, it runs the risk of being shut down. This is not to say that it is unreasonable to make content encouraging violence against your guidelines. But so long as the content is not illegal, a platform should not be faced with a dogpile of tech giants for choosing to let its users speak their minds.

That said, the pressure to conform with certain speech policies and standards of moderation does not come from tech companies exclusively. During congressional antitrust hearings on the tech monopolies held by Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook, some U.S. senators argued for social media companies to be even more aggressive in taking down posts. Threats of litigation can be leveraged against tech companies by the government, encouraging them to pursue policies that may be preferred by certain officials or agencies.

So, is there anything that can actually be done to combat political censorship by tech companies? Maybe. The largest legal protections that tech companies have are those provided under the Communications Decency Act Section 230:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

In a nutshell, this means that tech companies cannot be held liable for the actions of their users, i.e. you cannot sue Twitter for slander based on the statements made by Twitter user @FakeName37.

By and large, this is a good thing. A social media company that acts as a service provider should not be held responsible for the independent actions of its users. However, there is an argument to be made that companies such as Twitter, Facebook or Google by choosing to take responsibility for the speech of their users out of concern for things like disinformation in the cases of the New York Post or election fraud conspiracy theorists have now invalidated those protections. By deciding that certain kinds of political speech are not acceptable, they have effectively become publishers of content as opposed to simply service providers.

This is where the road starts to get a bit rocky. As I stated, it is very possible for the federal government to use threats of litigation as a way for tech companies to pursue policies it finds favorable. In early 2020, I wrote about one such case: the EARN IT Act, proposed legislation that would have threatened to remove Section 230 protections if tech companies did not sacrifice user data encryption and potentially even send all user messages to law enforcement agencies to be scanned for child sex abuse material. If Section 230 protections were to be revoked, this could still open a pathway to more authoritarian speech controls.

I stand by my opposition to the EARN IT Act for its intent to undermine end-to-end data encryption. However, with the increasingly apparent authoritarian censorship by tech companies (particularly in the past year), something may need to be done to preserve individuals freedom of political expression. Taking a good hard look at exactly who should be protected under Section 230 could be one solution, albeit a risky one.

According to the current interpretation of Section 230, companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook are protected from the threat of mass litigation by their users. But to allow tech companies to continue to abuse their monopolies over the public square of discourse unchecked is a serious mistake and one that needs to be addressed. If faced with no other option, rethinking Section 230 protections may just be a risk worth taking.

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Unchecked Big Tech Censorship is a Serious Problem - Drexel University The Triangle Online

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. George Orwell

This is the slippery slope that leads to the end of free speech as we once knew it.

In a world increasingly automated and filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence, we are finding ourselves at the mercy of inflexible algorithms that dictate the boundaries of our liberties.

Once artificial intelligence becomes afully integrated part of the government bureaucracy, there will be little recourse: we will be subject to the intransigent judgments of techno-rulers.

This is how it starts.

Martin Niemllers warning about the widening net that ensnares us all still applies.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak outbecause I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak outbecause I was not a Jew.Then they came for meand there was no one left to speak for me.

In our case, however, it started with the censors who went after extremists spouting so-called hate speech, and few spoke outbecause they were not extremists and didnt want to be shamed for being perceived as politically incorrect.

Then the internet censors got involved and went after extremists spoutingdisinformation about stolen elections, the Holocaust, and Hunter Biden, and few spoke outbecause they were not extremists and didnt want to be shunned for appearing to disagree with the majority.

By the time the techno-censors went after extremists spouting misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, the censors haddeveloped a system and strategy for silencing the nonconformists. Still, few spoke out.

Eventually, we the people will be the ones in the crosshairs.

At some point or another, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes extremism, we the people mightallbe considered guilty of some thought crime or other.

When that time comes, there may be no one left to speak out or speak up in our defense.

Whatever we tolerate nowwhatever we turn a blind eye towhatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combatting fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.

Watch and learn.

We should all be alarmed when prominent social media voices such asDonald Trump,Alex Jones,David IckeandRobert F. Kennedy Jr.are censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.

The question is not whether the content of their speech was legitimate.

The concern is what happensaftersuch prominent targets are muzzled. What happens once the corporate techno-censors turn their sights on the rest of us?

Its a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

We are on a fast-moving trajectory.

Already, there arecalls for the Biden administration to appoint a reality czarin order to tackle disinformation, domestic extremism and the nations so-called reality crisis.

Knowing what we know about the governments tendency to define its own reality and attach its own labels to behavior and speech that challenges its authority, this should because for alarm across the entire political spectrum.

Heres the point: you dont have to like Trump or any of the others who are being muzzled, nor do you have to agree or even sympathize with their views, but to ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship would be dangerously nave.

As Matt Welch, writing forReason, rightly points out, Proposed changes to government policy should always be visualized with the opposing team in charge of implementation.

In other words, whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now, for the sake of the greater good or because you like or trust those in charge, will eventually be abused and used against you by tyrants of your own making.

As Glenn GreenwaldwritesforThe Intercept:

The glaring fallacy that always lies at the heart of pro-censorship sentiments is the gullible, delusional belief that censorship powers will be deployed only to suppress views one dislikes, but never ones own views Facebook is not some benevolent, kind, compassionate parent or a subversive, radical actor who is going to police our discourse in order to protect the weak and marginalized or serve as a noble check on mischief by the powerful. They are almost always going to do exactly the opposite: protect the powerful from those who seek to undermine elite institutions and reject their orthodoxies. Tech giants, like all corporations, are required by law to have one overriding objective: maximizing shareholder value.They are always going to use their power to appease those they perceive wield the greatest political and economic power.

Welcome to the age of technofascism.

Clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, technofascism is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem to achieve a common goal.

Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but its a dubious distinction at best. Certainly, Facebook and Twitter have become the modern-day equivalents of public squares, traditional free speech forums, with the internet itself serving as a public utility.

But what does that mean for free speech online:should it be protected or regulated?

When given a choice, the government always goes for the option that expands its powers at the expense of the citizenrys. Moreover, when it comes to free speech activities, regulation is just another word for censorship.

Right now, its trendy and politically expedient to denounce, silence, shout down and shame anyone whose views challenge the prevailing norms, so the tech giants are lining up to appease their shareholders.

This is the tyranny of the majority against the minorityexactly the menace to free speech that James Madison sought to prevent when he drafted the First Amendment to the Constitutionmarching in lockstep with technofascism.

With intolerance as the new scarlet letter of our day, we now find ourselves ruled by the mob.

Those who dare to voice an opinion or use a taboo word or image that runs counter to the accepted norms are first in line to be shamed, shouted down, silenced, censored, fired, cast out and generally relegated to the dust heap of ignorant, mean-spirited bullies who are guilty of various word crimes and banished from society.

For example, a professor at Duquesne University wasfired for using the N-word in an academic context. To get his job back, Gary Shank will have to go through diversity training and restructure his lesson plans.

This is what passes for academic freedom in America today.

If Americans dont vociferously defend the right of a minority of one to subscribe to, let alone voice, ideas and opinions that may be offensive, hateful, intolerant or merely different, then were going to soon find that we have no rights whatsoever (to speak, assemble, agree, disagree, protest, opt in, opt out, or forge our own paths as individuals).

No matter what our numbers might be, no matter what our views might be, no matter what party we might belong to, it will not be long before we the people constitute a powerless minority in the eyes of a power-fueled fascist state driven to maintain its power at all costs.

We are almost at that point now.

The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwells1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

Orwell intended1984as a warning. Instead, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.

Nothing good can come from techno-censorship.

Again, to quoteGreenwald:

Censorship power, like the tech giants who now wield it, is an instrument of status quo preservation. The promise of the internet from the start was that it would be a tool of liberation, of egalitarianism, by permitting those without money and power to compete on fair terms in the information war with the most powerful governments and corporations. But just as is true of allowing the internet to be converted into a tool of coercion and mass surveillance, nothing guts that promise, that potential, likeempowering corporate overlords and unaccountable monopolists to regulate and suppress what can be heard.

As I make clear in my bookBattlefield America: The War on the American People, these internet censors are not acting in our best interests to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns. Theyre laying the groundwork to preemptanydangerous ideas that might challenge the power elites stranglehold over our lives.

Therefore, it is important to recognize the thought prison that is being built around us for what it is: a prison with only one route of escapefree thinking and free speaking in the face of tyranny.

WC: 1562

See original here:
Techno-Censorship: The Slippery Slope from Censoring 'Disinformation' to Silencing Truth - John Whitehead's Commentary Techno-Censorship: The Slippery...

A former employee of TikTok's parent company ByteDance has claimed it tried to develop an algorithm to censor livestreams in the Uighur language.

In an anonymous interview with Protocol, the former ByteDance staffer, who worked for the company's Trust and Safety team, described developing tools to help the company's moderation efforts for Douyin TikTok's sister app for the Chinese market.

China has been condemned for its treatment of the Uighur Muslims, an ethnic and religious minority in its western Xinjiang province, where tens of thousands of Uighur people have been held in detention centers.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said last month that he regarded China's treatment of the Uighur Muslims as genocide.

In the Protocol interview, the ex-employee described how their work often was helping ByteDance build tools to quickly remove content which might violate China's censorship laws.

"We received multiple requests from the bases to develop an algorithm that could automatically detect when a Douyin user spoke Uyghur, and then cut off the livestream session," they said.

"The moderators had asked for this because they didn't understand the language. Streamers speaking ethnic languages and dialects that Mandarin-speakers don't understand would receive a warning to switch to Mandarin.

"If they didn't comply, moderators would respond by manually cutting off the livestreams, regardless of the actual content.

"But when it comes to Uighur, with an algorithm that did this automatically, the moderators wouldn't have to be responsible for missing content that authorities could deem to have instigated 'separatism' or 'terrorism'."

The ex-employee said the tool was never built, partly because the company lacked the data and partly because popular livestream channels were already "closely monitored."

They added: "I do not recall any major political blowback from the Chinese government during my time at ByteDance, meaning we did our jobs."

A ByteDance spokesperson told Insider: "Given the huge diversity of dialects and languages spoken in China, Douyin continues to increase its moderation capacities to keep our community safe, particularly in livestreaming.

"As of today there are still a number of languages and dialects that we do not have the personnel resources to effectively moderate, but we are working to resolve this."

In 2019, TikTok itself was accused of censoring "in line with Chinese Communist Government directives" by US Senator Marco Rubio, near the start of an increasingly heated war of words that ultimately saw President Donald Trump try to ban the app from the US over national security concerns.

In November, a senior TikTok executive told a UK parliamentary hearing that the company did previously censor content "specifically with regard to the Uighur situation" but she added it no longer did this. The same executive later backtracked, saying she "misspoke" and the company had never had a specific policy against the Uighur community.

TikTok has repeatedly sought to distance itself from its Chinese ties. The Biden administration is reportedly re-assessing whether it will uphold an order from former President Trump that would force TikTok to divest its US operations.

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ByteDance 'tried to build an algorithm to censor Uighur livestreams': ex-employee - Business Insider

If there is censorship, we will adhere to it as per government norms. But there should be a guarantee that after this the content will not be pulled down or questioned. There is no lack of clarity when it comes to censorship for Vibhu Agarwal, CEO and founder of the Ullu, among the new OTT apps that have been pushing the envelope on what can be shown via these platforms.

Although all OTT platforms and news websites now come under the ambit of the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry, there is no law or autonomous body that governs their content. The controversy surrounding recent shows like Tandav and Mirzapur has prompted the government to look at new ways to reign in this content.

In India if the government imposes censorship laws, it will be in place not just for me but for everyone, reasons Agarwal in an interview with Indianexpress.com. There is a big difference between censorship terms in movies 15 years back and today. On OTT platforms we get a certain liberty to express creativity and people enjoying watching it, he said.

Agarwal is in favour of censorship, but is unsure that it will silence those demanding it. He cites the case of the recent Tanishq advertisement. There was nothing vulgar or violent about it but yet there was a ruckus.

Introduced in 2018, the homegrown OTT platform Ullu is known for its bold and edgy content. While its web series are primarily targeted at Tier 2 and 3 audience, Ullu has been targeted for promoting erotica and vulgarity in its shows.

Why did they see it in the first place and why are they speaking about it? Agarwal questions the hypocrisy of people. He asks why there is no criticism when there are similar scenes in movies of big stars.

Agarwal says shows like Kavita Bhabhi and Charmsukh Jane Anjane Mein are the most popular on its platform. People have given positive comments and have demanded that we create such content and keep continuing it, he says.

AltBalaji and Ullus success has shown that there is a market for erotic content in India and other OTT players too are trying to cash in on it. While some may brand shows like Ullus Charmsukh Jane Anjane Mein or Alt Balajis Gandii Baat as soft-porn, Agarwal highlights: We dont have any kind of nudity in our content. If someone wants to watch nudity, why would they watch it on OTT platforms?

But there is the risk on someone who is appearing on a show being associated with content that is more hardcore. There are so many actors working that doing a background check is difficult, Agarwal says. If an actor has worked with us a year ago and we know a lot can change over the course of that year.

Our system is such that we do not do any production in-house, we outsource all our work. People create the work and give it to us. If we like it, they propose the location, costumes, side actors, lead actors etc, he explains the process of how a project gets a greenlight from Ullus creative team.

We dont take auditions. They tell us their requirements; we take a look test as a soft copy so we know the acting skills. Thats important to check the intensity of the actor. Post that we fix a budget, they shoot it and give it back to us, we do a QC and we take the film. This is how we work, he explains.

Although Agarwal refused to divulge the active subscriber base of his app, he said it has clocked 28 million downloads across Android, iOS and Fire TV platforms. A lot of these came during the Covid-19 lockdown period, as Agarwals Ullu app achieved a growth of 220 per cent. All that was on offer has been consumed by the audiences.

Agarwal is well aware of the image of Ullu app in peoples minds, and does want to go beyond the desi-erotica genre soon. So far, we have gone in just one direction. About a year back, we realised that we need a mix of content, he says.

But the move to introduce regular content hasnt gone down too well with users. In December, Ullu had released Peshawar starring Rajeev Sen, the younger brother of Sushmita Sen. The show was based on the attack on an army school in Peshawar that left over 140 school children dead in 2014. It was a flop; it was clean content with no abusive language, he says.

However, Agarwal says he will continue to invest in content that will bring a broad group of paying users. Also, his budgets have gone up and he is now willing to fund shows in the Rs 5 crore to Rs 10 crore bracket to get better artistes and sets that sync with the storyline. Previously, the shows were in the Rs 2 crore to Rs 5 range.

The 2.0 version of Ullu will look beyond better content and also improve the app experience. The latest version of the app has a censor filter to let users choose the type of content they want to see. If you decide to watch the censored version, all the intimate scenes will be edited. The drinking and smoking scenes, however, will appear with appropriate disclaimers.

Even though the streaming app has a mass following in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Agarwal says he has seen increased viewership and growth coming from West Bengal in recent months. Because the viewers are now spread pan-India, the Ullu content can be watched in multiple languages, including Tamil, Telugu, Bhojpuri and English. The South Indian market is really picking up, he said. According to Agarwal, Kannada and Malayalam audiences prefer to watch their content in English.

Despite the Ullu app being heavily targeted at the tier-2 and tier-2 cities, Agarwal says the subscriber base includes users from tier-1 cities too who pay to watch content on the app. This is a sign that the genre where Ullu excels isnt limited to rural parts of India as many tend to believe.

Another myth associated with the content shown on the Ullu app is that the characters and stories resonate more with men than females. Agarwal says 60 per cent of Ullu users are males and the remaining 40 per cent are females. A year ago, before the pandemic, the ratio was 80:20.

View original post here:
As Ullu looks beyond risque, CEO open to censorship, even adds it as feature in app - The Indian Express

Saintly Heart is a small, online Catholic toy shop, which describes the wooden toys and temporary tattoos it sells as a playful way for kids to learn about the saints. Clearly, theyre not the type of outfit youd expect to be selling products with overtly sexualized positioning.

Yet according to Instagram, thats exactly what Saintly Heart did so much so that owner Maggie Jetty received notice on Jan. 22 that a tag to one of her products had been removed from an Instagram post she had made more than a month previously.

The overtly sexualized product in question? A wooden figurine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I was shocked because Ive never had any issues with Instagram or having a Catholic item on there, Jetty told the Register, noting the irony that an image of the Patroness of the Unborn was flagged on the day when the Church specifically prays for the legal protection of unborn children.

Jetty immediately followed up with Instagram, submitting a request that the decision be reviewed. But, now, more than three weeks after the fact, she has yet to hear back, describing the Facebook-owned social-media platforms system for managing complaints as kind of like a black hole.

On its own, what happened to Saintly Heart might be easy to dismiss as a fluke or a quirk of the algorithms used by social-media platforms to filter out offensive content. After all, Catholic items arent the only products that have been mistakenly tagged as overtly sexualized. A picture of Walla Walla onions in a wicker basket, for instance, received the same treatment from Facebooks algorithms in October 2020.

However, a recent slew of similar instances of de facto censorship affecting Catholic businesses, organizations and individuals is renewing concerns about the possibility of Big Tech bias against Catholic and other religiously conservative viewpoints.

In addition to Saintly Heart, several other Catholic small businesses are reporting products being blocked on social media for ill-fitting reasons, often times months after the products had first been placed on digital markets without event. An ad for Just Love Prints Rest in Him vinyl sticker, for instance, was censored by Facebook because of its apparent sexually suggestive manner. Other companies have had images of saints flagged for promoting alcohol consumption, with alcohol in no way represented in the images.

Other recent instances of de facto censorship seem less attributable to bizarre but unintentional algorithmic overreaches. The Catholic publisher TAN Books has faced social-media difficulties with a number of its products. Carrie Gress The Anti-Mary Exposed was pulled from a Catholic gift shops Instagram and Facebook accounts in January nearly a year after it was first posted after being flagged as an adult product.

TANs Facebook ads promoting Kimberly Cooks Motherhood Redeemed and Paul Kengors The Devil and Karl Marx were recently pulled down, in the formers case because of an alleged violation of the social-media platforms Sensational Content Policy and the latter because of Facebooks apparent policy to limit ads related to politics during the general elections, which were held months ago.

Perhaps most egregious of all, ads have also been pulled for Regina Domans Stations of the Cross, on the basis that the books cartoonized, non-gory depiction of the Crucifixion perhaps the most iconic and widespread image in world history contained shocking, sensational, inflammatory or excessively violent content.

In one of the most brazen and obvious instances of viewpoint censorship, the Twitter account of Catholic World Report (CWR) was suspended after the outlet tweeted a Catholic News Agency news brief describing Dr. Rachel Levine, President Joe Bidens nominee to be assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, as a biological man identifying as a transgender woman.

CWRs account was locked on Jan. 24 on the basis that the tweet in question violated Twitters rules against hateful conduct, purportedly for pointing out that Levine is indeed a biological male. On Jan. 27 Twitter responded to CWRs complaint, confirming that a violation did take place, and therefore we will not overturn our decision.

On Jan. 29, Twitter reversed course and lifted CWRs suspension, offering no clarification directly to CWR, but telling Catholic News Agency that the enforcement action was taken in error and has been reversed. But Carl Olson, CWRs editor, pointed out that the shift only happened after the story began to spread, generating pushback against the social-media giant from the likes of the Catholic League and even secular sources.

I would have to say No, Olson said when asked if he thought CWRs Twitter account wouldve been restored without widespread outcry. I have to think that if nobody noticed it and we didnt even mention it, and this just kind of went along, I think the account would have been [permanently] locked for not agreeing to remove the offending tweet.

Olson said he wasnt surprised that the offending tweet was initially labeled as hateful, given the totalitarian tendencies of transgender ideology, which treats any disagreement with its conception of human sexuality as a form of violence. He said this viewpoint is highly influential among Big Tech employees, well-documented to be far more progressive and nonreligious on average than the American public.

He said what CWR experienced is part of a wider pattern of post-election aggression from Big Tech platforms against those with opposing viewpoints.

I think thats really part of whats going on, Olson told the Register. I think theres a little bit of a kind of testing of what the response is, when outlets are blocked or issued warnings.

Mary Eberstadt, the Panula Chair at the Catholic Information Center and a senior fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute, made a similar assessment. Writing for Newsweek, she suggested to President Biden that his election has emboldened your liberal and progressive allies to target for ostracism and punishment a new band of deplorables: your fellow Catholics. Eberstadt urged the president to tell your progressive allies, and everyone else, that prejudice remains prejudice even when it is aimed against people who did not vote for you.

Lack of Transparency

Theres no denying the recent flux of Catholic voices and entities caught in the content filters of Big Tech platforms, but does this series of anecdotes necessarily indicate deep-seated, systemic bias against Catholics and other conservative viewpoints in the way these companies moderate content, perhaps even baked into their algorithms?

Its hard to say, says Rachel Bovard which is a big part of the problem.

Because there is no transparency, the terms [of enforcement] are so vague, and there are no actual details about how Big Techs algorithms actually work were just kind of left scratching our head, Bovard, the senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute, told the Register.

Bovard, who also serves as a senior adviser to the Internet Accountability Project, testified on Big Tech bias before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law in October 2020. The lack of transparency regarding Big Techs decision-making about content moderation and the way their algorithms work means denials of bias are just as unverifiable as accusations, she said.

Bovards testimony cited Mark MacCarthy, a senior fellow at the Institute for Technology Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University, who suggested that Big Tech could dispel accusations of bias by allowing researchers to examine their internal practices related to system-wide algorithmic and content moderation a suggested solution that Bovard noted no company has pursued.

Speaking to the Register, Bovard suggested that the lack of transparency is intentional, allowing progressive social-media giants to aggressively moderate content that violates their political commitments behind a veil of vague community standards. A prominent recent example was the suppression of an October New York Post article alleging that then-candidate Biden was involved in his son Hunters business dealings with foreign energy companies. The Posts Twitter account was initially locked on the grounds that its story was based on illegally obtained information, a standard inconsistently applied across the platform.

Another recent high-profile case was the permanent ban of former President Donald Trump from Facebook and Twitter for allegedly inciting the violent riots that took place at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a move that the tech giants havent taken with other world leaders, such as Irans Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has called for violence against Israel.

Even without access to their internal practices, Bovard said there is ample evidence that Big Tech platforms engage in viewpoint bias. Given the de facto level of control these companies exert over access to information and the public conversation, she said the regime of censorship exercised by social-media giants represents a threat to a free society and even to religious peoples ability to witness in the public square. When other peoples viewpoints are taken away, our ability to evangelize is limited; our ability to persuade is nonexistent, said Bovard, a Catholic.

Although companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google are privately owned, Bovard contended government intervention is justified for two reasons. One, she said Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a measure that provides social-media services with immunity from civil liabilities from content posted to their platform, is tantamount to a subsidy, making these companies privileged First Amendment actors in a way that movie studios, newspapers and other publishers cant be without repercussions.

More importantly, Bovard suggested, these private companies ability to influence the wider conversation represents a legitimate public concern.

So it is totally appropriate for the government to step in and say, No, Big Tech, you dont get to decide how we live together. You dont get to decide what information we can access. That is what we [as a society] decide. Bovard added that government intervention in such a scenario is perfectly consistent with the conservative understanding that government has a legitimate, albeit limited, role to play in conserving free society.

In terms of remedies, Bovard and other Catholics, like former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, expressed concern about repealing Section 230 protections outright, suggesting it might give a government controlled by progressives unprecedented power to censor conservative speech online.

Instead, she recommended greater enforcement of federal antitrust laws, which prohibit predatory industry monopolies, a designation she believes fairly applies to Big Tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter, especially with the recent suppression of alternative platform Parler from the marketplace.

We dont give amnesty for other lawbreakers, said Bovard. Why do we give amnesty for Big Tech? Theyre breaking the law.

Enforcing antitrust laws against Big Tech wouldnt necessarily mean forcibly breaking up the companies concerned. Bovard said the government could also pursue behavioral remedies, which would limit Big Tech companies abilities to use their enormous financial resources to limit competition in the marketplace. An example of one behavior that could be checked would be Googles ability to pay exorbitant amounts of money to make itself the primary default search engine on phone and web browsers, effectively boxing out the competition.

Questions of Big Tech oversight are expected to come up before Congress this session, with considerable bipartisan support for the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. Another proposal, the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Act of 2021, would offer far more sweeping reform of U.S. antitrust law.

For some Catholics, the escalation of potential Big Tech censorship of conservative religious viewpoints is not only unsurprising; its an indication that Catholics should look elsewhere for platforms to share their views.

Register blogger Matthew Archbold, who also blogs at CreativeMinorityReport.com, said Catholics made a mistake by abandoning blogs for social-media platforms over the past decade. Recent difficulties with social-media platforms may be the catalyst for a return to blogs, which he contended are a more human and less impulsive way of communicating on the internet.

Im not saying we should log out from Facebook or Twitter completely, Archbold recently wrote for the Register. But I also think blogging your well-reasoned thoughts or sharing your real-life experiences is far better than hot takes. A blog post can go in depth whereas a tweet is so limited. Bovard, however, said such retreats could become a ghettoization of Christian witness and says that Catholics should be proclaiming the truths in the Gospel very loudly and wherever we can.

As religious people, we have just as much of a right to the public square as everyone else, she said. And in America, the greatest country in the world that was founded on pluralism and freedom of expression and freedom of religion, that is something that we should fight for.

For his part, Olson of Catholic World Report took a both/and approach. While some Catholics might have a particular calling to be engaged in social media as an apostolate, he said this isnt necessarily a requirement of everyone. Additionally, he urged Catholics who do feel called to engage on social-media platforms to consider the potential spiritual costs not only political and social ones and suggested that others should be exploring creative ways of doing our own thing.

Jetty at Saintly Heart pointed to the irony of social-media giants essentially deplatforming the saints by limiting her business outreach, given that social networks tend to promote all sorts of secular lifestyles with little in the way of restriction. She said her desire to provide a more compelling example to young people today is one of the primary reasons she started Saintly Heart. And because of that, she said shell continue to market on Facebook and Instagram, to the extent that shes able.

Our kids need good role models, she said. They need to learn about the faith younger, because theyre learning a lot about life on social media, and its not a great place for them.

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Catholics in the Crosshairs of Big Tech?: Recent Cluster of Cases of De Facto Online Censorship Raises Concerns - National Catholic Register