Facebook has thrown the book at several prominent people. It
calls them “dangerous individuals” and they include people accused of hate
speech anti-Semitism and white supremacist views.
Yair Cohen is a solicitor for Cohen Davis, specialising in social
media law and author of the book The Net is Closing Birth of the E police.
What do you what do
you think of Facebook's action here?
I think it is very difficult to justify this action by Facebook
and I'd be the last person to condone anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, there is an
increasing commonality between the left and the right, particularly at the
extreme ends.
One of the main reasons given by Facebook for blocking those
Facebook accounts was that many of the individuals blocked had been promoting anti-Semitism
which, coincidentally, is one of the thickest common threads that link those
two extremes. It seems, however, with very few exceptions that Facebook is only
acting in relation to right-wing extremism, which makes the left-wing extremists
feel fairly good about their own anti-Semitics views. For some reason, far-left
anti-Semitism is far more acceptable to Facebook than far-right anti-Semitism.
Far left anti-Semitism views are often aired by “smart”
people including academics, “liberal” politicians, respectable newspapers and
others who are “too good” to be anti-Semites.
There is no question that the far left has become even more
extreme with its anti-Semitic views than the far right. Therefore, Facebook’s one-sided banning of one
side of the intolerance spectrum isn’t going to do any good.
Facebook’s policy of dividing the extreme left from the extreme
right isn’t helpful. In fact, it is likely that the ban on far right extremists
will increase anti-Semitic sentiments, first because the far right will just continue
doing what it does best, which is to fight for its right to express its bigotry
views and second, it legitimises the far left who will feel that its own form of
anti-Semitic sentiments, which are often dressed up in “progressive” language is acceptable, because ‘hey, you know, Facebook
says it's okay. We haven't been banned.’
Far left anti-Semitism is far more dangerous than far right
anti-Semitism because it is sneaky and because it is dressed up as progressive.
But surely, doing
something is better than doing nothing, right? Isn’t it better that Facebook bans
some anti-Semitism rather than does nothing?
The truth is that doing something half-heartedly isn’t the
answer. For many years I have been advocating for a better policing of the
internet and love it or hate it, in the future, the internet is going to be
heavily regulated. Selective policing is
injustice and history tells us that the consequences of selective policing and
selective justice are often far worse than no policing at all.
Facebook is very well known to be a left-wing organization. On 23 August 2018, a post by Brian Amerige, a
senior Facebook engineer, went quietly on Facebook’s internal message board, saying
“We are a political monoculture that’s intolerant of different views”. Facebook has since admitted to not having
sufficient political diversity within the company and the concern is that
taking action against one group of people, who happened to mostly consist of
far right individuals is going to result in developing a resentfulness and
anger among the far right whilst at the same time giving the far left an
assurance that its form of anti-Semitism and other intolerances are acceptable.
Whilst the message to the far-right is clear, the far left, on the other end is
sent an ambiguous message that at best says, ‘Hey, you are doing just fine. You
can continue spreading your form of anti-Semitism.’
Facebook is paying a lip service to the UK government’s
calls for it to do more to combat intolerance and advocacy to self-harm.
It is only a lip service because it only bans a group which
Facebook believe is outside a consensus.
Facebook’s efforts might have come across as more genuine if
it banned anti-Semitic expressions full stop. But anti-Semitism is only one
type of expression which Facebook needs to address. Anti-vaccine propaganda is
another. In India, children are dying every day because their parents refuse to
vaccinate them due to anti-vaccination propaganda which they either see on
Facebook or Instagram or which they did not see themselves but had been told
about, by someone in a position of authority, such as a teacher or a priest.
The anti-vaccine propaganda, generally speaking, reflect far-left and
libertarian-authoritarian values, which are not only allowed to go without
interruption on Facebook but which are actively promoted there via sponsored
links and auto suggestions searches. Despite the horrific consequences of this
propaganda, which impacts on the lives of some of the poorest people in the
world, Facebook believes that these views constitute “free speech”. In my view,
anti-vaccine propaganda, is as bad as anti-Semitism propaganda.
So how is this is all going to end? I believe that in the
future, there will be a third party, an impartial body that will advise
Facebook and other popular social media organisations about the correct balance
between free speech and the ban of intolerance and fake news propaganda.
Ideally, this advisory or regulatory body will be acting as an advisor or a
mediator and will be free of political affiliation and its role will be to provide
social media companies with fair and impartial advice.
The government will eventually, like it or not, police the
internet. This is inevitable. Recently it published a White Paper which warned
internet companies very clearly of its intention to set up a news internet
regulator. How powerful this regulator will be, will largely depend on how
genuine social media companies’ effort to combat intolerance, prevent self-harm
and decrease the amount of fake news is. So far, they aren’t doing that great.
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