Wednesday, May 05, 2021

"Facebook ‘Supreme Court’ Upholds the Blacklisting of Donald Trump"

The Crabgrass headline is the same one Breitbart used in its reporting.

Censorship, especially in concentrated private hands with no accountable check but affecting us all, is a bad thing. In a society of competing ideas, let them compete.

Prior restraint of a politician's future ability to speak to a people has consequences. Zuckerberg has no place telling a nation and a world what is good communication and what is bad, and to be censored as such, by him, on a common carrier. 

Breitbart reported:

The Facebook Oversight Board is said to be an independent body that rules on Facebook’s decision in an impartial manner. Facebook cannot overrule the board, but does pay the salaries of everyone on the board.

___________UPDATE__________

Editorial comment about the Oversight outcome, two items, both from Guardian; here and here. Believe whatever. The second item is written by an Oversight Board member. 

Social media is still in its infancy. Among the many thorny issues we periodically discuss as a board is, what is this thing we’re regulating? The existing language – “platform”, “publisher”, “public square” – doesn’t adequately describe these new entities.

Most of the suggested forms of more interventionist regulation stub their toes on the sheer novelty of this infant space for the unprecedented mass exchange of views.

And, hence, when the smoke clears and the elasticity of all that relaxes, we did what we did, within our power? We were cautious to constrain but not overturn what Zuck said is to be so because he says so? And, besides, Jan 6 makes matrons clutch their pearls? 

Cannot recur? Explaining everything? Zuck's way? Or the highway? What? Have there been dismissals or resignations from that review tribunal over policy? The initial appointment process; only recognized experts, etc.? How selected? What express hiring criteria, to get the post and pay?