No, the FBI Is Not ‘Paying Twitter to Censor’
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
The FBI is not "paying" twitter to censor.
The FBI is reimbursing twitter for the costs associated with censoring on their behalf.
Now allegedly the trust & safety team for different platforms is to blame. Sure, they made mistakes too.
There were attempts to create misinformation authorities and key people at Twitter seemed very cooperative with this mission. I think Techdirt is trying to paint a different picture here.
The planned disinformation governance board was ultimately scrapped, but I doubt that is true for the intentions that lead to it. And these intentions are also on record for Twitter personnel.
I believe the term censorship can be applied to summarize the situation. Because there are clearly efforts by government institutions to pressure social media platforms to comply with content moderation decisions. That is the point people criticize. Is the attempt already a scandal? I believe so, but there also were more tangible examples that at least lack transparency and justification.
And all that doesn't even include any chilling effects. Maybe the former Twitter staff did a good job. Perhaps they are a victim of government requests. Musk doesn't make the impression to be a better shield. But in the end the goal, intend and effect is censorship still.
Additionally there are private services that also remove content on different platform. Often illegitimate content, but they often advertise themselves as not being restricted to that. Government can use these services too of course.
This statement applies to 100% of all privately held media companies. Since it's possible for a media company to get benefits from government or businesses, they will all be pressured to support certain agendas.
Local news stations benefit from a friendly relationship with the police, who give access to information in exchange for positive coverage. Larger media outlets will give positive coverage to the military / government / big business in exchange for access and ad revenue.
Media is also pressured to biased in favor of social issues. Local businesses are more likely to pay for ad spots if the news adopts a right-wing market populist point of view, which is why talk radio trends hard to the right. Conversely, since the prime demographic is 18-35 year olds, it benefits mass media to adopt a center-left point of view.
It's been 35 years since Manufacturing Consent has been published, the mechanisms by which the government and big business influence the media is well understood. The Twitter files are nothing more than facts that have been hiding in plain sight for decades. It's confounding, and quite frankly more than a little suspicions, that some people are only noticing this after right-libertarian positions are suppressed. And very telling that the same people who were decrying censorship 3 months ago are cheering when their guy starts doing the same thing to their political enemies.