by Sam Westrop
Facebook’s message is clear: Censorship is absolutely necessary, and we, the users, can be deputized to turn in those who break the rules.
In
April, a federal court ruled that President Trump’s Twitter account
serves as a public forum, meaning that his account may not block other
Twitter users. Writing in the New York Times, law professor Noah Feldman declared: “This is the first time, to my knowledge, that the First Amendment has ever been applied to a private platform.”
In
Silicon Valley, however, the thinking is currently very different.
Social-media companies favor censorship, especially as a means to deal
with the topical issues of “hate speech” and “fake news.” Facebook, for
example, recently published its
“community standards” policy on censoring “hate speech” in the wake of
many months of bad press and public inquiries. The tech giant promises
its users protection from attacks on race, ethnicity, disability,
gender, and so on. Facebook even inadvertently released a proposed new feature that asked users whether each social-media post they encountered qualified as “hate speech.”
Facebook’s
message is clear: Censorship is absolutely necessary, and we, the
users, can be deputized to turn in those who break the rules.
By
assuming the role of moderator for the opinions of its two billion
users, Facebook is now in the extraordinary position of being the
world’s top arbiter of acceptable speech. If we choose to accept that
Silicon Valley should be tasked with censoring views that, in a public
space, would be constitutionally protected, then the tech giant’s
approach appears reasonable. But, as those outside the Silicon Valley
bubble — including conservatives, anti-Islamist activists, and moderate
Muslims — are increasingly finding, there are far too many examples of
Silicon Valley applying its policies unreasonably.
Over
the last few months, YouTube has restricted or removed a number of
videos uploaded by my accounts. One was a BBC debate I did on the
question of Islamism. Uploaded four years ago with the permission of the
show’s producers, it had, until its removal, received around half a
million views. YouTube banned this debate, featuring Muslims and
non-Muslims on both sides of a balanced and well-moderated argument and
broadcast on British state-funded national television, only stating that
it contained “inappropriate content.”
Perhaps
this was an innocent mistake. Appeals, however, have gone unanswered.
And this small inconvenience to me is dwarfed by the scale of censorship
taking place across social-media platforms today. Amid the current
furor over Facebook’s behavior, which has dominated the news over the
past few months, a number of politicians have questioned this embrace of
censorship. During Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before
Congress in April, Representative Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) and Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) denounced Facebook’s decision to suppress conservative social-media pages, and Representative Bill Johnson (R., Ohio) asked Zuckerberg why Facebook had removed an advertisement featuring Jesus on the cross and deemed it “violent.”
It
is not just conservatives who are targeted. Long before the removal of
my BBC debate on Islamism, moderate Muslims and critics of Islamist
political ideology found themselves subject to bans and restrictions on
social media for articulating reasonable ideas and criticisms that
deserve debate rather than restriction.
Since July 2016, Google has censored videos published on YouTube by Prager U,
a digital-media publisher that produces short videos discussing topical
questions. Restricted videos included presentations about Islamism
given by moderate Muslim voices, including by
Kasim Hafeez, a British Muslim who now speaks out against the same
Islamist anti-Semitism in which he once believed; Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an
anti-Islamist campaigner and women’s-rights activist; and Khurram Dara, a
prominent American Muslim author.
In 2017, Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) was targeted by
“a coordinated reporting and flagging campaign” that led to Facebook’s
restricting their posts. EXMNA opposes radical Islam and offers a home
to apostates facing abuse and persecution. Nothing it posts on social
media is remotely hateful.
In
fact, censorship of anti-Islamist voices by Silicon Valley is now an
almost weekly occurrence. Just last month, Canadian intelligence expert
and prominent anti-Islamist researcher Tom Quiggin lost access to
his Gmail and YouTube accounts after Google decided that a trailer for a
podcast merely mentioning the issue of extremism warranted a
suspension.
In February, the Middle East Forum submitted a
call for examples of censorship on social media to the readers of its
mailing list. In just a few days, we received hundreds of responses. Our
readers and allies, upon posting anti-Islamist content, have had
Facebook accounts shut down, YouTube videos demonetized (i.e. shown
without advertising, thus depriving the poster of revenue), and the
reach of Twitter accounts suppressed.
Silicon Valley’s efforts to silence anti-Islamist voices should perhaps have been expected as early as 2012, after YouTube blocked access to
a film titled “Innocence of Muslims,” which portrayed the Islamic
prophet Mohammed rather unflatteringly. If blasphemy had become one of
Silicon Valley’s mortal sins, then detailed criticisms of Islamist
political ideology were inevitably due to face censorship as well.
Interestingly, part of Silicon Valley’s current reasoning for
censoring “hate speech” is that it is a key component in
counterterrorism efforts — ostensibly, censorship helps reduce online
radicalization. But Facebook, Google, and other tech companies do not
apply the heavy hand of censorship equitably. While counter-extremist
activists and moderate Muslims are silenced, plenty of genuine terrorist
content remains online. In 2015, the Middle East Media Research
Institute (MEMRI) flagged 115 videos on YouTube that openly incited or celebrated terrorism. Two years later, in June 2017, MEMRI reported that 69 of these videos remained online.
Islamists,
meanwhile, have actually benefited from the burgeoning tech-censorship
movement. In July 2017, a prominent Salafi cleric, Omar Suleiman, successfully lobbied Google
to adjust its algorithm to exclude search results for Islamic terms
such as “jihad” and “shariah” that lead to “offensive or clearly
misleading content.”
Suleiman describeshomosexualit
Because
lawful extremist movements work to exploit Western systems rather than
destroy them, it has proved easy for Islamist activists and their
apologists to use the simple complaint processes offered by social-media
companies to paint criticisms of intolerant ideologies as broadly
brushed hate — thus furthering the extremist agenda and silencing its
critics. With the proposed new “hate speech” button, Facebook will make
this exploitation even easier.
Reasonable
people regard criticism of Islamism to be unworthy of suppression, but
rather something to be discussed openly and urgently. Unreasonable
people, meanwhile, aided by simplified online reporting processes,
hysteria about “fake news” and “hate speech,” and the misuse of
counterterrorism efforts, have painted legitimate criticism as deadly
offense and encouraged others to be offended as well. Tech companies, in
thrall to lawful Islamists and their fellow travelers, have been happy
to oblige. For moderate Muslims and their supporters, Silicon Valley
offers little support.
Censorship
is not, of course, the only issue currently plaguing Silicon Valley’s
reputation. Harvesting of customers’ data and the much-discussed
prevalence of “fake news” have dogged companies such as Facebook and
Google for years. While conservatives and moderate Muslims claim their
views are restricted by social-media companies, others, citing the
dangers of xenophobia and hate speech, conversely call on
Silicon Valley to enact even more censorship and restrictions. The
current political attitude to Silicon Valley is clear: Reform or risk
regulation.
But
when you’re beset by criticisms from all sides, what does reform look
like? Social-media companies are certainly not in an easy position. Any
change is bound to upset someone. As private entities, Silicon Valley
corporations are currently free to publish or censor whomever and
whatever they want. But after years of Silicon Valley marketing teams’
telling the public, press, and politicians that they offer a selfless public service,
it is not particularly surprising that politicians around the world are
increasingly regarding social media as a public utility.
In
the wake of the federal court’s ruling that the president’s Twitter
account is subject to First Amendment rules, one step Silicon Valley can
take to fend off greater government oversight is not to fight that
idea, but to embrace it. Social media should make a voluntary public
commitment to the same rights of free expression that the government is
required to guarantee its citizens in the public square. Politicians
will find it difficult to justify regulating corporations that embrace
the same constitutional ideals by which government is bound.
Otherwise,
any further attempts by Silicon Valley to tackle “fake news” and “hate
speech” will inevitably end up silencing those who engage in neither —
whether conservative, liberal, Muslim, or anyone else. The better option
for social-media companies is to commit openly to free speech for all
users, regardless of their political views. Silicon Valley should be
told: If you don’t restrict us, then we the people won’t restrict you.
Sam Westrop is director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum
Source: https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/moderate-islam-falters-in-the-face-of-silicon-vall
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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