E-Pluribus | May 10, 2021

Republicans capitalizing on cancel culture, censorship as default, and both left and right crying "Facebook!"

May 10, 2021

A round up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Jonah Goldberg: When Republicans Capitalize on Cancel Culture

While conservatives have a legitimate beef over cancel culture and censorship, Jonah Goldberg points out that those same conservatives are prone to cry wolf. In a perverse twist, “cancel culture” and “censorship” are used to promote the message on the very platforms being excoriated for the alleged behavior.

In one of his many recent appearances on Fox News, Hawley said “free speech in America now depends on the whims of a monopoly corporation.” He was referring to Facebook, whose oversight board endorsed (at least temporarily) the company’s decision to ban Donald Trump from its platform after the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Hawley also made the same claim on Twitter. He even posted a Fox News clip of him denouncing Facebook on Facebook.

There are certainly many serious concerns relating to free speech and Big Tech these days, and Hawley even raises some of them, though I’m dubious about his proposed remedies.
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The culture is another story entirely. The old Puritan ethos that brought us “banned in Boston” has been reborn as a censorious contagion infecting vast swaths of the left and, truth be told, big parts of the right. Cancel culture is a thing. But it’s an American thing. I’d argue it’s worse on the left, in large part because the left controls more big institutions in the media, entertainment, and education. I don’t like it, but I’m not prepared to put the government—never mind Hawley—in charge of policing speech.

Read it all here.

Abigail Shrier: Has Censorship Become Our Baseline Expectation?

After some very limited internal pushback at Amazon (one employee, as far as we know) over her book on transgender youth, Abigail Shrier noted a shift in the way the media covered the story. Rather than a focus on the attempt to prevent the sale of a book, the reporter who contacted Shrier framed the story around Amazon’s refusal to ban it. For a country where free speech and freedom of the press is a foundational principle, this role reversal should be a concern to anyone seeking open expression and debate of ideas.

And it isn’t only the activists who are pushing for censorship—but journalists—journalists! Those whose life’s work depends on a culture of free expression.

Take the reporter who called me from the Seattle Times, Katherine Anne Long. She messaged me yesterday over Twitter, asking for comment. “I’m writing an article about Amazon’s refusal to remove your book from its digital shelves after employees, including leaders of Amazon’s LGBTQ+ affinity group, campaigned for the company to stop selling Irreversible Damage. One employee called the book ‘hate speech.’ I wanted to give you the opportunity to respond.”

One employee.

After an apparently arduous investigation, which involved “examining the content of the book in detail and calibrating with senior leadership,” Amazon had determined that the book did not in fact violate its content policy. So there.

But notice who bears the burden of proof, in all this—not the employees braying like Veruca Salt, “I want it now!” They bear no burden—in today’s journalists’ minds—to prove that my book is hateful (it isn’t). Amazon, the bookseller, bears the burden of proving the book does not “frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.” And I—the author—bear the burden of proving my innocence to America’s journalistic Torquemadas.

Read the whole thing.

Robby Soave: Both the Left and the Right Are Exaggerating the Threat Posed by Facebook

While Robby Soave of Reason does not deny there are reasons to be concerned about the power of Facebook and other big tech behemoths, he writes that their powers are not remotely comparable to governments with armies at their command. Indeed, both the left and right have elements seeking to exert actual government power to rein in the power of corporations, a game of one upmanship that neither side is likely to win in the end.

Facebook is indeed a powerful and influential company, but these people all need a reality check. The social media site does not wield nearly as much power as actual governments. Facebook doesn't drop bombs on its enemies or send troops to bust down their doors and kill them. Facebook can't put people in jail, or confiscate their money, or forbid them from gathering in groups, or force children as young as three to wear masks while they play sports outside. The only thing Facebook can do is stop people from posting on Facebook.
The right's escalation of Facebook moderation policies to an extinction-level threat is extremely unhelpful, as it obscures some legitimate concerns about how the media bullies the company into making bad calls, as well as issues with the various hypocrisies—often unintentional—produced by uneven enforcement. But to hear conservatives tell it, we are supposed to believe that Facebook's existence has singlehandedly ended the American experiment in representative democracy.
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What's especially telling about this sort of panic is that it perfectly mirrors liberals' own ongoing freakout about Facebook. Indeed, with only minor changes to Schweppe's statement, it would be identical to something Rachel Maddow or Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) might say: We all know what happened in 2016. By allowing Russian-backed influence operations to spread viral disinformation, Facebook and other social media companies swung the election to Donald Trump.
Forget the millions of dollars the campaigns spent on their own advertising on television, the radio, in print, and elsewhere: A handful of misleading Facebook posts and/or bad moderation calls were the decisive factors. Clearly.

Read it all at Reason.