inviting you to break the law
pulling social media across the line
just because you get invited to a party does not mean that you ought to attend.
entrapment is a time honored government tradition. they invite you to break the law, then bust you when you do. there are actually protections set up around this but they are honored more often in their breach than in their adherence.
speech and online speech are no different. fedbois (and likely fedgrrls) lurk in chat rooms seeing to incite and invite violence and terror to the point where conspiracies to kidnap public officials wind up being “all fed” as they wind up doing nothing but ensnaring one another.
your tax dollars at work.
section 230, the “26 words that created the internet” appears to be no different.
"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." (47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1)).”
this establishes social media and user content driven sites (like substack) as carriers, not authors. they did not create the text so they do not bear responsibility for it.
obviously, the feds and their interminable backbench of cutouts from academia and non-profits have ignored this to astounding degrees. they embed, advise, and require all manner of speech circumvention and suppression. they create groups like SIO to do it for them and then pretend “it’s all private!” they stand around out in front of your office like some mobster named “molotov mcgillicutty” and admire your storefront while opining what a shame it would be if it burned to the ground.
despite being nearly entirely unenforced, this is illegal. it should be illegal because it’s clearly immoral and counter to basic rights. with any luck, SCOTUS will finally get around to saying so.
but it’s also a form of entrapment.
the feds and their minions are seeking to pull social media offside and they are neither gentle nor subtle about it.
they demand that social media platforms “act responsibly” and censor “harmful speech” and “provide information to the state.”
but this is entrapment. it’s an invitation to break the law or at least to step outside its penumbra of protection.
section 230 applies to “carriers” because they are not the authors.
but if you censor or emphasize or de-emphasize certain viewpoints or speakers then you are not just a carrier anymore, are you?
you’re a curator, perhaps even an editor.
the output and opinions are, at least to some degree, yours.
you now have agency in the messaging your site carries because you did what they asked and now you’re no longer on the clear side of a line but have drifted into the murky gray lands in betwixt and in between.
right where the government wants you.
the whole point is to criminalize everyone to ensure that the protection racket is universal. this has become the primary praxis of the modern state.
obey us or you will have no protection from us and we’ll give you a rapid fire lesson in all the possible meanings of the phrase “or else.”
this is the (often deliberate) nature of the legal thicket. so many laws, so many rules, so much contradiction and contrivance and confusion. when the law is sufficiently complex and far reaching, it becomes impossible to follow and impossible to even know if you have followed.
no just system may emerge from or survive such structures.
from insider trading to “following too closely” so many of these crimes “are what we say they are.”
the goal is not justice.
the goal is “if they want you, they can have you.”
everyone is outlaw.
so the system runs on prosecutorial fiat.
do you ever have the slightest idea if you have really paid your taxes properly?
do you think speech is any different?
they too “have tools for that.”
that fact that the rules are unclear is not a bug, it’s a feature. the capricious, arbitrary nature of what will and will not bring down the wrath serves to render each and all their own jailors, their own thought police for if you have no idea where the line lies, you fear to even step in that direction and you keep yourself well back from anywhere such tripwires might prove to be underfoot.
X/twitter CEO linda yaccarino speaks of “censorship is not the answer” and “not on our watch” but in light of her publicly espoused position of “freedom of speech but not freedom of reach” which is used to such intense effect on X these days and so severely limits platforms, pundits, and positions that there are whole lines of discussion that basically cannot be had and numerous folks i follow who NEVER show up in my feed unless i go looking for them, linda does not seem to believe her own words.
and her actions send a chill through twitter speech as people fear the hidden lines that lead you to reside upon the suppressed list, a place far more subtle and insidious than exile. the exile becomes a martyr, the suppressed just sounds like a whiner when people say “aww, poor baby. did you ever think that it’s just that no one cares about what you have to say?”
and it’s a powerful effect. i have more followers on twitter than here and the nature of the system leads to 100’s of re-tweets on popular posts. but they still get fewer views than a typical substack.
it’s obvious the fix is in for certain participants.
(and don’t i sound whiney complaining about it? that’s the game now.)
to be sure, X is A LOT better than it was under the old team with their shadowban and decatforming ways, but it’s far from free and a great many things remain verboten over on the one time casa del bluebird.
try linking a substack in a tweet and see what happens. you’ll get zero visibility. it’s visible to you but basically no one else.
(note: i see many of you try this and always get zeroed. there is a work around. do not use the substack “share” feature. instead write a tweet on X. do not include any links to substack. use it to set the topic and copy some text, then add a second tweet to the same thread (subtweet) and include the link there. (example) the top tweet will have much better visibility.)
try discussion of one of the forbidden topics.
try even finding some authors.
you get buried. try to retweet a no-no list account? your RT is invisible.
the site remains a morass of message manipulation and this is wrong.
censorship by stifling the spread of certain viewpoints is still censorship and "truth shaping."
there is no valid a priori means to determine which viewpoints are "false" or "harmful."
you can only know this after free, fair, and open debate in which all sides may be heard.
the solution to "wrong speech" is "more speech" not "limiting the reach of those in disfavor."
the open agora should not have hidden thumbs on the scales.
it’s also dangerous for X.
and to engage in such manipulation opens up a threat surface for the company as a whole.
and so linda, if you’re listening, please consider this:
if X insists on shaping idea and viewpoint accessibility and visibility and deciding which outlets it will allow to be carried and seen, don't be surprised when the congress-critters or the FCC come for your section 230 status and declare you not a carrier but an editor/curator.
because they will have a point.
because you will be.
In the current cycle its more effective to "allow" a population to "choose" what they can say than it is to mandate what you can't say.
Why?
Because a generalized/arbitrary threat induces an "abundance of caution", thereby INCREASING/EXPANDING organically through "crowdsharing" (word of mouth/networking) of what is acceptable and what isnt.
Nazi Germany employed the same insidious/sinister tactics; they didn't ban certain books, rather they let people "choose" what they THOUGHT might be verboten.
There's a progressive ratcheting effect in this tactic because anything that is considered "adjacent" becomes off limits....leading to an ever expanding adjacents of adjacents that starburst from that which everyone knows is off-limits.
And guess what?
This gives the "henchman" next door more options for which they can call in the jackboots, thereby giving even more control, tacitly, over what can be said. In this way, there is both an implied threat, in general, and explicit threat when you or your next door neighbors get the "knock"....a feedback loop, tightening the focus of what is ordained and what COULD be problematic to say.
And most insidious of all is it encourages people to accept, or even say, that which they know not to be true or that which they disagree with...leading to people unconsciously believing the lie over time...because they no longer have a way to seek truth.
Would sure like to see a detailed response by Musk..