While Trump Complains About Facebook Takedowns, Facebook Is Helping Trump Take Down Content He Doesn't Like

from the oh,-look-at-that dept

You might have noticed in the last week or two that President Trump has suddenly jumped on the silly bandwagon suggesting that internet platforms like Facebook and Twitter don't have a right to kick people off of their platforms. There have been a bunch of misleading tweets he's made, but we'll just post this one that kicked it all off:

In it, Trump says:

I am continuing to monitor the censorship of AMERICAN CITIZENS on social media platforms. This is the United States of America — and we have what's known as FREEDOM OF SPEECH! We are monitoring and watching, closely!!

Of course, "FREEDOM OF SPEECH" in the American context only applies to the government interfering with the rights of people to express themselves, and has no bearing on companies choosing to kick off people who it finds problematic. Indeed, part of the 1st Amendment is that it provides the platforms -- as private entities -- the right to determine who they associate with and who they don't.

But a new Wired article suggests that there's a striking contrast here, in that Facebook has someone who is quick to respond and to shut down the accounts of those designated by Trump's government as undesirable. It's difficult not to read this as somewhat hypocritical. The issue relates to another story we discussed last month, in which the Trump White House declared Iran's IRGC a "foreign terrorist organization." The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, is basically Iran's military/security/law enforcement wing -- and this is the first time that a governmental organization has been declared a foreign terrorist organization in the US. And Facebook immediately accepted this claim from the White House and banned any related accounts:

The day after Trump’s move, Instagram, a Facebook property, blocked the accounts of high-ranking Revolutionary Guard officers. And the next week The New York Times reported that Fishman had said Facebook would have zero tolerance for any group the US deems a terrorist organization.

In short, at the same time as Trump is incorrectly referencing the 1st Amendment with regards to Facebook's private moderation decisions, his own White House is effectively able to dictate to Facebook what accounts need to be taken down:

So basically Trump can tell Facebook to de-platform any part of any foreign government—including, presumably, an entire foreign government—and Fishman, along with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, will reply with a crisp salute? Under Facebook’s current policy, that would seem to be the case.

Wired's Robert Wright asks Facebook's "global head of counterterrorism policy," Brian Fishman, to defend this, and Fishman basically says "I'm just following orders"

When I asked Fishman to justify this policy, he said it’s designed to keep Facebook on the right side of the law, which prohibits Americans from providing “material support” to any group deemed a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

But, I replied, the law goes on to spell out the things that would constitute “material support,” and none of them sound much like “letting these groups post on your social media platform.” Fishman said, “I’m not a lawyer. I’m a policy guy.”

You can understand why Facebook might wish to avoid falling afoul of material support for terrorism laws (though the few attempts to hit social media companies with this law have all failed miserably), but the end result is this bizarre situation in which the President is whining about blocking accounts on Facebook (which are actions by a private company in which the government has no say), while his own government is using its (questionable powers) to have accounts banned on Facebook (which potentially do have more actual 1st Amendment implications).

Filed Under: brian fishman, content moderation, donald trump, foreign terrorist organization, iran, irgc, material support, social media

What Will Happen When Governments Disagree Over Who Is A Terrorist Organization... And Who Needs To Be Blocked Online?

from the a-big-mess dept

You may have heard the recent news that President Trump has decided to label the the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) a "foreign terrorist organization." The IRGC is Iran's powerful military/security/law enforcement apparatus -- that also owns a ton of businesses. As the White House itself admits, this is the first time a foreign government agency has been referred to as a foreign terrorist organization. This is big news in a huge variety of ways -- in large part because it could end up criminalizing lots of people and businesses who unwittingly do business with the IRGC including (checks notes) a firm called The Trump Organization.

But, leaving that aside, it raises some other issues as well. We've been talking about the impact of the terrible EU Terrorist Content Regulation that the EU Parliament will soon be voting on. But, as we've discussed in the past, there are lots of questions about who decides just what is "terrorist" content. Daphne Keller tweeted about the IRGC decision, wondering what happens when one country's laws demand the removal of content from another country's government and suggests (accurately) this is going to lead to a huge mess.

Of course, it also gets even more complex than that. On a recent On The Media episode, they discussed efforts by a few different websites to archive terrorist propaganda, both to learn about what's happening (in the form of open source intelligence), but also for the purpose of historical records. As the piece notes, many researchers and reporters find those archives to be incredibly valuable. And yet, they're dealing with issues of demands for the content to be taken down as "terrorist content."

This is not a new issue. For years, we've pointed out how demands to delete "terrorist content" online has regularly resulted in the silencing of human rights groups documenting war crimes.

Combine all of this together and we're creating a recipe for disaster. The EU is demanding that all "terrorist content" be deleted with one hour's notice. The US is designating government organizations as terrorist groups. And human rights groups trying to document war crimes are being kicked off the internet. None of this seems like a good way to actually fight terrorism. It really seems like a solution designed to pretend that terrorists can be swept under the rug, like if we don't know what they're doing out there, they'll just magically disappear.

Filed Under: donald trump, eu, foreign terrorist organization, iran, irgc, terrorism, terrorism designation, terrorist content, terrorist content regulation