Another blow to free speech

Some members of Congress apparently think that Facebook, Twitter, and other social media giants are still not doing enough to censor the political views of conservatives on their platforms.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House committee investigating the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has issued subpoenas to Twitter, Meta (Facebook), YouTube, Alphabet (Google), and Reddit to consider whether the platforms were promoting “domestic terrorism.”

The tech companies are already facing lawsuits and widespread customer backlash for the one-sided silencing of political speech.

In the most famous example, Twitter canceled the account of @RealDonaldTrump, then the sitting president of the United States, for violating its community standards. Twitter then canceled numerous other accounts and purged many followers because an algorithm determined they were likely Russian bots. More recently, Twitter permanently removed the account of U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Ga.

Twitter is not alone in this respect: YouTube has taken down videos of U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson and Rand Paul, the latter for saying what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now admits is true concerning the efficacy of cloth masks in fighting the spread of COVID.

And we know from admissions made from the podium of the White House press room that the Biden administration is conspiring with the social media platforms to remove so-called “health disinformation.” My law firm represents a Twitter and Facebook user who was suspended by both platforms for posting peer-reviewed social science about the masking of children at the same time the White House and surgeon general launched a coordinated campaign against so-called “health disinformation.”

Whether the topic was ballot integrity in the 2020 elections, information about COVID-19, or the events of Jan. 6, the social media platforms were on the prowl for disfavored opinions.

And yet apparently, all of that is not enough. Revoking or suspending user accounts, removing individual posts or video content, requiring disclaimers, and imposing accompanying links to “accurate” information still does not cut it as far as congressional Democrats are concerned.

Because let’s be real: These subpoenas are not about gathering information—their purpose is intimidation. Few things send a shudder down the spine of a corporate executive at a publicly traded company like a congressional subpoena. We all know where this is headed: a front-page photo of new Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg taking an oath before a congressional committee.

In advance of fulfilling the subpoena and testifying, the pressure from the CEO’s office to corporate underlings will be intense: “Give me everything we’ve got where we’ve taken steps to shut down extremist speech. Let’s turn over a thousand pages documenting everything we’ve done.” But who defines “extremist?”

But it will not stop there. The corollary will be equally obvious: “We need to do more. I need to announce something. Let’s rewrite the algorithms, let’s commission more volunteer monitors, let’s hire more in-house censors—give me something to give the committee.”

And so, in the name of “combatting domestic terrorism,” the already woke scions of Silicon Valley will censor even more speech.

Domestic terrorism is a real threat—we were reminded of that vividly a few weeks ago when an Islamic terrorist held hostages at a Jewish synagogue in Texas. And those who broke the law on Jan. 6 deserve the full measure of justice for their violation of America’s temple of democracy.

But Speaker Pelosi and her hand-picked and one-sided Jan. 6 committee are making the most of the old Rahm Emmanuel adage, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

Under the glaring bright lights of a congressional room, the social media platforms will take the hint to “do more” to combat domestic terrorism, defined by the left as any speech on the right deemed unacceptable. These same platforms seem to think that no speech to the left is ever too “extreme.”

When Congress enacted Section 230, the law that provides liability protection for platforms that remove content, it said its purposes included ensuring the internet “offer[s] a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.”

How far Congress has fallen from that noble aspiration.

Editor’s note: Daniel Suhr’s law firm, the Liberty Justice Center, represents Justin Hart in a lawsuit challenging Twitter and Facebook’s suspension of his social media accounts.