Don’t Let Twitter and Facebook’s Content Regulations Drive You Insane.
We don’t need these things. These things need us.
One of the major stories of the 2016 election was social media’s role in serving as a platform for the spread of misinformation. Right now, we’re living through the sequel, and like everything that 2020 touches, it sucks.
Half a year ago, Twitter slapped a Trump tweet with a first-of-its-kind on-tweet fact check. More followed on his tweets and others’, and across the platform, Facebook has been increasingly flagging posts deemed false or misleading.
Yet the biggest development in the misinformation wars came just last week, when both Facebook and Twitter, with no initial explanation, suppressed a New York Post article reporting on the contents of a recovered laptop that allegedly belonged to Hunter Biden. Those who attempted to share the story quickly found that their ability to do so was restricted, and that this restriction was accompanied by no explanation.
The move was met with outrage from many, which is to be expected; the unannounced decision to limit the New York Post article’s exposure on their platforms was, without question, the boldest and most egregious step the platforms have taken yet. And by CEO Jack Dorsey’s own admission, “Our communication around our actions on the New York Post article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”
To say the least, Twitter and Facebook’s increased efforts to step up regulation of certain information on their platform have incensed partisans and drawn accusations of censorship and political bias. Beyond that, it’s genuinely up for debate whether Twitter and Facebook’s actions have actually accomplished anything in the way of achieving the platforms’ stated objective of slowing the spread of dis/misinformation. Color me a skeptic.
Nonetheless: all of this is very new, and happening very quickly, and the reactions to it are setting the tone of the discussion around how to combat misinformation moving forward.
Which brings me to the point: here is the wrong lesson to learn from the great social media clampdowns of 2020:
A disclaimer: I have never met Bret Weinstein and the criticisms of him that I am about to level are intended purely as illustrative. I am sure he is a nice guy and I agree with him on plenty of subjects. Just not this.
We live in an era in which many of our leaders, our celebrities, our politicians, and thus sometimes times our friends and family seek and find value, meaning, and purpose in donning the identity of the righteous aggrieved victim, whether warranted or not. That is what’s happening here; note the abundance of dramatic, absolutist language in Weinstein’s announcement of his own supposed victimhood. “Evicted.” “Governed…in private.” “Disaster is inevitable.” Disaster is inevitable, because Bret Weinstein no longer has unfettered free access to a private service provided by a private company.
By throwing himself this dramatic public pity party, Weinstein is casting himself to his tens of thousands of followers as a brave, truth-telling crusader who is being unjustly silenced by the unchecked powers that be.
But he is not. It’s more likely that he’s just a social media addict who has mistaken Twitter and Facebook for real life, and who, with his hysterical post, has inadvertently revealed his miscalculation to the world.
Now, at least some of the general frustration with Twitter and Facebook’s clumsy attempts at regulation is warranted. As I’ve written before, Silicon Valley tech companies are simply not equipped to successfully police our national discourse, nor are they really all that interested in doing it. They have been bullied into the position of having to try, however, by politicians’ bipartisan desire to avoid accountability; protecting American democracy is the job of America’s elected representatives, not America’s tech companies. But you wouldn’t know that from listening to Dianne Feinstein, who once challenged Mark Zuckerberg to explain what Facebook is “doing to prevent foreign actors from interfering in U.S. elections,” as if that’s his job and not hers.
That Facebook and Twitter have now been thrust the mantle of regulating America’s information diet is truly one of the stupidest developments of our time. These companies will fail; they are already failing, and they will make a mess of things and enrage many as they fail. They are not designed to be safeguards of democracy; they are designed to make money, and they are only good at one of those things.
So, no, the right lesson to learn from the social media clampdowns of 2020 isn’t that “disaster is inevitable” and that “we are being governed now in private, by entities that make their own rules and are answerable to no processes.” That’s hysterical nonsense; it just simply isn’t what’s going on, and if you think it is, you’re spending way, way too much time online. We aren’t “governed” by Facebook; you don’t have a constitutional right to post on Facebook, and if being denied access to Facebook causes you to sputter into such deep despair that you see no other future but “disaster,” then it is you who has a problem, not Facebook. Facebook is a private, for-profit company that offers consumers a product. Consumers don’t have an unalienable right to use that product, and moreover, hard as it may be to believe, they don’t have an essential need for it, either. We don’t actually need to use social media, and if playing by Twitter and Facebook’s rules upsets us, we can simply abstain.
It’s that simple. That, my friends, is the right lesson to take away from all this: we don’t need these things. These things need us.
Look at what the belief that he needs and has an unalienable right to unfettered, unqualified access to Facebook has done to Bret Weinstein. He is pouting and doom-casting to his thousands of followers because a private, for-profit company (perhaps temporarily) exercised it’s right to deny access to whomever it pleases. It has driven him and others who share his sentiment publicly insane.
The Bret Weinsteins of the world would like you to believe that aggrieved posts like his are the clarion calls of rebellion — a warning sign of techo-tyrrany to come, and an urgent message that we must fight back against imposing, power hungry tech giants before their looming “disaster” strikes.
But that’s not what it is. It is merely Weinstein’s own accidental confession that he is addicted to posting, and even after the ability to post has been taken away from him, he remains completely unaware of his addiction or the detrimental effects it has had on his life.
I’m hardly a defender of censorship. To the contrary. I loathe the puritanical, censorious, quick-to-outrage tide has swept American cultural and political life, and I will be the first person to argue for the principles of freedom.
But Facebook and Twitter are not infringing on your Constitutional right to free speech by attempting to regulate their platforms, however feebly, and if you think they are, then you, yourself, are not truly free. You have let them take up too much psychological space in your life. They are limiting what is shared on their platform — which is their right to do as private organizations — and they are doing it badly, because they are not equipped to do it any better. Facebook was started in a dorm room as a platform where dumb, drooling college guys could ogle and rate the looks of their female colleagues. Of course the fact that they have suddenly been imbued with the task of regulating the American conversation and protecting the integrity of our elections is leading to frustrating and idiotic results.
That’s the lesson. We don’t need these things. They need us. If you’re mad at Facebook, stop going on Facebook. If you want to send a message to Twitter, stop tweeting. If you want to actually enjoy the rich rewards of this life and of the freedoms recognized by the country we live in, internalize that you will never find them on social media platforms, which are designed to addict you, not fulfill you. These products aim to draw you in, hook you, and keep you scrolling at all costs, and they are remarkably effective at it. Hence the apoplectic response from those addicts who are denied their drug.
Do not let them drive you insane. Go outside.
