For those who are unfamiliar how the horse trading works with Social Media and the Federales:
Zuck wants two things from the White House:
To be left alone and regulated as little as possible. That includes avoiding getting whacked for all the wonderful stuff it does for (sorry I meant "to") kids.
To kick the crap out of it's chief competitor TikTok so those bastards don't continue to steal market share. For example, like congress recently requiring TikTok selling it's company (which I suspect will fall into the loving hands of allies).
What the White House wants from Zuck.
Curate Facebook and Instagram's online content to align with the narrative they want promoted. For example, censoring anything they don't like.
What's illegal about this?
Facebook, unlike for example the NY Times is a public forum.
The US Gov has no right to influence content unless it violates the first amendment or they've gone to court and won an injunction from a Federal judge based on the content posing a threat to the public.
Should this be a concern to you? NO! Who cares about the first amendment. You don't see people in Russia complaining?
BTW: First three minutes Ben gives some great dets/prospective. Zuck says he regrets burying a bunch of COVID content the White demanded he pull down and burying the Hunter Biden story based on pressure from the FBI. This is pretty wild.
The ‘Tell’ in Zuckerberg’s Letter to Congress
He neither admits nor denies that Meta bowed to government censorship pressure.
By Philip Hamburger
Aug. 27, 2024 4:40 pm ET
Mark Zuckerberg sent a mea culpa letter Monday to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, admitting that Meta, which owns Facebook, erred in acquiescing to government pressure for censorship. But it’s important to look closely at what the letter says and what it doesn’t.
On the one hand, Mr. Zuckerberg concedes what by now is obvious—that there was much government pressure for censorship: “Senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.”
On the other hand, he distances Meta’s censorship decisions from the government pressure: “Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions.” Mr. Zuckerberg (and surely his lawyers) thus admits both the pressure and the social-media censorship but carefully keeps the two apart. The aim, presumably, is to avoid having Meta treated as a state actor for purposes of the First Amendment and then being held liable for damages.
Mr. Zuckerberg isn’t denying that the government caused some of Meta’s censorship decisions. The letter is too carefully drafted to say something so obviously untrue. So in saying that it was “our decision” whether to take down content, Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t claim that such decisions were unaffected by the government pressure—that was the whole point of the pressure.
In fact, Meta’s decisions often were driven by government pressure, as evident from the extensive record in Murthy v. Missouri. Mr. Zuckerberg’s phrasing about “our decisions,” however, sidesteps the causation question. It avoids any overt concession that the efforts to influence the company actually caused Meta to suppress speech.
The closest the letter comes to admitting causation is Mr. Zuckerberg’s assertion that he told his teams at the time that “we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction—and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.” This sounds like bold defiance. But “if something like that happens again” suggests that Meta didn’t push back when it happened before—a backhanded admission that government pressure caused Meta to “compromise.” Mr. Zuckerberg never says, and couldn’t say, that Meta would have made the same censorship decisions in the absence of government pressure.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s letter is unintentionally revealing. Although it belatedly acknowledges the repeated government pressure, it’s much too cagey, nearly silent, about the effect of that pressure in securing social-media censorship. Mr. Zuckerberg’s caution about causation speaks volumes about his fears (or those of his lawyers) that, if the truth were out, Meta would be legally vulnerable.
Mr. Hamburger teaches at Columbia Law School and is CEO of the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
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