(2020-08-20) Hunt Facebook Delenda Est

Ben Hunt: Facebook Delenda Est. So … I’m pretty close to being a free speech absolutist. Or at least I have an old-school small-l liberal John Stuart Mill-esque belief in free speech, with an extremely high bar for the “harm” that speech must directly inflict on other citizens before a rightfully constituted government, based on the consent of its citizens, has a legitimate duty to regulate that speech. Facebook is not a content-delivery platform. Its business is not to “give people voice and bring people together”, as Zuckerberg says in his best cartoon voice. Facebook is an advertising-delivery platform.

And I believe that the US Supreme Court has been pretty much spot-on with its free speech decisions like Brandenburg v. Ohio and R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, where they said (roughly speaking) that even speech calling for violent protest against the government is protected speech and that hate speech isn’t a thing. Let me repeat that last one. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly held that hate speech is not a thing. I think this is exactly right.

Now I also believe that the US Supreme Court got it terribly, terribly wrong with Citizens United, where they decided (again, roughly speaking) that non-real life citizens – like corporations or other constructed legal entities – enjoy the same protections for political speech that real life citizens do. I’ll repeat that one, too. The US Supreme Court has held that constructed entities of pooled capital (corporations) or pooled labor (unions) or pooled political influence (parties) have the same protection for their political speech as unconstructed/unpooled you and unconstructed/unpooled me. I think this is nuts.

To be clear, I also believe that limitations on how much money or time real life citizens can spend on their political speech are similarly nuts. So, for example, I believe that really rich American citizens like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or George Soros or Charles Koch can spend as much money as they please – literally billions of dollars if they want – to proclaim whatever cockamamie political idea they want to proclaim.

But that’s where we are today. These non-people … these non-citizen, non-voting, artificially constructed legalistic entities of pooled capital, labor or influence … they enjoy MORE free speech protections than you and me.

The more powerful the non-citizen entity of pooled capital/labor/influence might be over Facebook’s business model, the more Facebook turns a blind eye to any violation of the hate speech standard by that entity and the more Facebook cracks down on any violation of the hate speech standard by that entity’s political opponents … particularly the small and helpless ones.

Facebook is not a content-delivery platform. Its business is not to “give people voice and bring people together”, as Zuckerberg says in his best cartoon voice. Facebook is an advertising-delivery platform.

Swearing off Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram is no solution here. There is no meaningful way to opt out of a ubiquitous and universal communications and social media platform, because the system of a ubiquitous and universal communications and social media platform is impervious to your individual decision.

These are the conditions under which a just government must reach down into a private organization like Facebook and turn their pernicious hate speech standards completely on its head.

Barring this sort of legislative fix to the core Facebook business model, the only other solution I see is to tear down Facebook on antitrust grounds, by which I mean force Facebook to divest WhatsApp and Instagram (Messenger, too), and maybe hive off the Indian and European operations from the US mothership.

What do I mean when I say BITFD? What is it that I want us to burn the fuck down?
This.
This system of bought and paid for political patronage that companies like Facebook use to nudge us into social ruin.