In the culmination of this round of struggle, social media and tech giants acted collectively to hammer home the point.
Twitter permanently banned Trump‘s private account, which has more than 80 million followers. Twitter, Facebook and 15 social media collectively blocked Trump and his members’ accounts, including the Trump campaign account, former national security adviser Flynn, and former campaign lawyer Powell. Even the official account of the U.S. President’s White House tweets were also deleted by Twitter in seconds, genuinely not the U.S. President as a village cadre.
This is not finished, Trump supporters turned to small social media Parler. Google, Apple, Amazon then hunted down, a sword, and took down the application. At the same time, all business partners terminated their cooperation with Parler.
In this way, Trump, who ruled the country by Twitter, was instantly “politically dead”.
The press is the uncrowned king, and freedom of the press is the “fourth power” of American society. Today, the establishment has a complete monopoly on this power – traditional media such as CNN and Internet technology giants. The tech giants acted collectively and instantly blocked the president’s speech, and even blocked the White House – the highest authority in the United States – at will.
The collective blocking of public opinion, the emergency second impeachment, the pressure of political contributions, the chaotic fist to kill the president, the festival really shattered, is there still freedom of speech in the United States? Is the establishment’s press power killing the supreme executive power of the country? Is this a real-life version of “1984”?
Trump’s supporters or opponents, the right or the left in every country, all condemn and ridicule the freedom of speech that Americans claim to have. But each has a different mindset and purpose.
This article follows “The Truth About America” and analyzes this historic global struggle against the establishment in the 21st century from the perspective of free speech.
The logic of this article
I. The Boundary of Freedom of Expression
II. The Scale of Online Public Opinion
III. The power of the tech giants
01
The Boundaries of Freedom of Speech
Jefferson once said, “If it were up to me to choose a government without newspapers or a newspaper without government, I would not hesitate to choose the latter.” The First Amendment, promoted by Madison, protects the individual’s freedom of speech from government infringement. With this “backbone,” freedom of the press became the “fourth power” in the United States.
Today, however, the “fourth power” is overriding the supreme power of the elected government. Is social media overstepping? The reasons for social media blocking Trump are surprisingly consistent – they involve incitement to violence. Google and Apple blocked Parler for the same reason. Is Trump inciting violence? Should incitement to violence be banned?
Let’s look at a famous case first.
In 1733, German Zenger immigrated to North America and founded the New York Weekly, but on the day of its launch, he clashed with the authorities. The reason was that the founding article attacked the colonial authorities. As a result, Zenger was arrested for “sedition,” and the authorities charged him with “outrageous slander and malicious abuse of the government in an attempt to incite anti-government sentiment.
The case attracted a prominent 60-year-old lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, to defend Zenger. At the beginning of the trial, Hamilton’s opening statement was powerful: “Every citizen has the right to freedom to state the undisputed truth” and “I cannot think that it is justified to deny people the right to make complaints, and I think it is the right of every free man born to make complaints. ” [1].
Hamilton argues that for Zenger to be found defamatory or inciting, it must be established that Zenger’s article is false, malicious and inflammatory. He insisted, “It is the lie that constitutes libel and the defamation.”
The judge, however, countered Hamilton: “Your claim is unacceptable and cannot allow you to prove obvious defamation as fact.”
Next, Hamilton made a great defense. He first bowed courteously to the judge, then faced the jury and said in a voice like a bell.
“It is those who injure and oppress the people under their rule that provoke the people to cry out and complain, but who then use the complaints of the people as a new instrument of oppression and prosecution.”
“It is not the cause of that poor printer alone, nor of New York alone, that you are here to try. It is not! Its consequences will affect every free man on the North American continent living under the British government. It is the most important thing of all; it is the business of freedom.”
Ultimately, the jury returned a “not guilty” verdict and Zenger was released. After the Zenger case, North Americans won freedom of the press, and there was never again a case in the colonial courts in which a publisher was tried for seditious libel.
The Zenger case inspired North American media men, scholars, lawyers, and later founding fathers such as Franklin, Adams, and Penn to seek justice through newspapers against the colonial authorities. more than 30 years later, in 1776, Penn’s Common Sense spread across the North American continent, igniting a complete revolt. A free press was considered an important force in winning the American War of Independence.
The Zenger case did not support the crime of “sedition,” but rather supported the righteous speech against oppression. But after the United States was founded, was incitement to violence against the state still allowed? If incitement to violence and treason is allowed to flourish, is this country not in danger?
Let’s look at the case of Schenck v. United States, also known as the “First Case of Draft Boycott” [2].
This case took place during World War I. The United States was engaged in the war, the front was anxious, and the rear had difficulties in recruiting soldiers. At that time, isolationism was popular in the United States, and many congressmen and people opposed the war and forced conscription, and attacked the Selective Service Act. Charles Schenck of the Socialist Party led this opposition, and in his speech he famously said, “The government has no right to send us abroad to kill people!” The Socialist Party sent out 15,000 anti-forced conscription leaflets.
At that time, Congress also passed a law, the Anti-Espionage Act. This law stated that “any person who induces or attempts to induce disobedience, disloyalty or mutiny on the part of naval or military officers or men shall be punished for willful obstruction of government conscription.” Schenck was in the crosshairs of the law and was charged with “conspiring to incite disobedience in the military” and “against the United States. The trial court found Schenck guilty of violating the Counterintelligence Act and sentenced him to six months in prison.
It didn’t end there. The Post Office was the censoring agency for anti-war, anti-draft speech at the time. New York Postmaster General Patten listed Popular magazine, which published Schenck’s anti-draft article, as “unlawful reading. The magazine sued Patten, claiming that the censorship violated free speech.
But the federal district court in New York, which heard the case, did not uphold the charge. The famous Judge Hand wrote in his ruling that “speech constitutes a crime of espionage only when it directly incites rebellion, revolt, etc., and that to treat legitimate discourse as incitement to sedition is to expel the patron saint of democratic politics and the greatest intolerance of all.”
Judge Hand found that the magazine constituted “direct incitement to rebellion and revolt.” Judge Hand understood the boundaries of free speech to be “direct incitement to rebellion and revolt. However, that decision was overturned by the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. What exactly are the boundaries of free speech?
A frustrated Judge Hand met Chief Justice Holmes on the train back to Washington, D.C., and expressed the “direct incitement” principle of free speech to the latter. At that time, Justice Holmes faced the same dilemma as Hand.
Shenk appealed the decision to the federal Supreme Court, invoking the First Amendment, arguing that the trial court’s decision violated citizens’ freedom of speech. This was the case of Schenck v. United States.
Justice Holmes, who was sitting on the case, ultimately rejected Schenck’s appeal. In his decision, he wrote: “When a nation is at war, many things which might be said in time of peace are so injurious to the national war effort that they cannot be tolerated, and no court will hold them to be entitled to any constitutional protection so long as there are soldiers fighting.”
Justice Holmes offered the famous “clear and present danger” doctrine to explain his decision. He said, “We do not deny that in many circumstances in peacetime a defendant would fall within the protection of constitutional rights by making all the statements he made in the leaflet. The nature of each act, however, depends on the various environmental factors in which it occurs. Even the most rigorous protection of free speech will not protect those who shout that they are on fire and cause panic at an inappropriate time. Nor would it provide protection for those who make statements that might cause the consequences of inflammatory violence. In any event, the question is whether the speech published appears to be of such a character as to present a clear and immediate danger of substantial harm that Congress has the power to stop.”
Since then, Holmes’ principle of “immediate and clear danger” has become the boundary of free speech in the United States. In a letter to Hand, Holmes said, “What I mean by ‘clear and present danger’ is not substantially different from what you mean by ‘direct incitement. However, since Hand’s principle was overturned by the Appellate Circuit, the later judges largely followed Justice Holmes’ principle, in accordance with case law practice.
The “imminent and obvious danger” doctrine draws the boundaries of free speech, avoiding violations of citizens’ freedom of expression under the Counterintelligence Act, and avoiding violations of citizens’ freedom of expression in the name of national security and incitement to riot.
The key to the Holmes doctrine is to determine the “circumstances of the speech,” i.e., whether it is a state of war or a state of peace. If it is a state of war, speech that incites violence is not protected by the Constitution. But if there is peace, what is the verdict?
Consider the famous 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio.
Brandenburg was the leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Ohio, who in 1968 verbally abused blacks and Jews through the television media. He even threatened, “If our president, Congress and the Supreme Court continue to suppress Caucasian whites, we will take certain retaliatory actions. We have 400,000 people and will march on Congress on July 4.”
Brandenburg was arrested on charges of inciting violence. An Ohio court found that the defendant had violated the state’s Organized Crime Prevention and Control Act and sentenced Brandenburg to 10 years in prison. However, Brandenburg appealed to the federal Supreme Court, claiming that the sentence was unconstitutional.
Ultimately, the full federal Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Ohio’s invocation of the Organized Crime Prevention Act violated the First Amendment and reversed the original sentence.
Using Holmes’ “clear and present danger” doctrine, the justices wrote in their decision that “the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and does not permit political law to prohibit or restrict any speech advocating violence or disobedience to the law unless it is made with the intent to incite others to ” instantly” violate the law or produce “instant” unlawful action, and only if the advocacy is indeed likely to incite or produce such “instant” violations can it be restricted or punished. The Federal Supreme Court requires that the speech not only be reasonably likely to cause immediate harm, but that the harm must be fairly obvious and serious for the political law to take action to restrict the speech.”
This case imposes even more onerous conditions for restricting free speech based on the Holmes doctrine.
First, “any speech advocating violence or disobedience to the law” cannot be prohibited, except for incitement to “immediate” lawlessness. Brandenburg called on 400,000 people from the Ku Klux Klan to march on Congress at a set time to take “retaliatory action. The time, place, and target of the retaliatory action were clear, organized, premeditated, and large in scale and inflammatory, and involved sensitive racial issues at the time, but the “immediate” condition was not met, and the Supreme Court upheld Brandenburg’s acquittal.
Second, even if the “immediate” violation condition is met, there are two more stringent requirements: the inflammatory speech directly causes the violation, and the harm must be obvious and serious. This means that there is a necessary, direct, “emergency violation” relationship between the inflammatory speech and the violation of the law, and that the harm is quite serious.
Third, if all of these conditions are met, then the power to restrict speech lies with “political law,” not with corporations or individuals.
Half of the history of federal Supreme Court litigation has been about homosexuality, and the other half has been about free speech. Following the principles of case law, the United States established extremely broad boundaries of free speech in Brandenburg v. Ohio.
So, is the Twitter and social media blocking class action unconstitutional?
02
The Scale of Online Opinion
Holmes’ “clear and present danger” doctrine sets a specific context for freedom of expression, i.e., “the nature of all conduct should be determined by the context in which it is committed. In Schenck v. United States, Justice Holmes cited a theater as an example: “The greatest freedom of speech does not guarantee anyone the freedom to run in panic in a theater screaming about a fire. This implies the idea of utilitarianism.
In the United States, speech is restricted in some specific environments. For example, you cannot make dangerous statements such as hijacking planes in airports and airplanes, you cannot make campaign statements in military venues, you cannot make statements in schools that interfere with the normal order of teaching, you cannot rant and disrupt the trial in court, and so on. And in the vast majority of environments, speech in the United States is extremely lenient.
Even so, we still cannot understand American free speech in terms of the political laws and customs of the other side of the ocean. It is not as if no one has been convicted for speaking out, or fired or expelled for speaking out. In 2010, for example, Thomas, the chief White House correspondent, lost his job for making offensive remarks about Israel. In the 2020 “Black Lives Matter” movement, for example, a college professor was fired after students reported him for speaking out against violence.
So, is there still free speech in the United States?
This requires an understanding of the separation of powers and the federal political system in the United States. The federal government, local governments, and local courts can sometimes unconstitutionally arrest and crack down on people who speak out. In particular, after 9/11, the federal government has increased its surveillance of intimidating speech. But arrests by the government are one thing, and it is ultimately up to the Supreme Court to determine whether a conviction is warranted. The defendant or victim can appeal to the Supreme Court and ask the justices to decide. Of course, that assumes you have the funds and the ability to fight the case.
Many people generally do not touch “political correctness” in order not to get themselves into trouble. Liu Yu, in “The Details of Democracy,” outlined the “four basic principles” of the United States, namely, no offense to minorities, no offense to women, no offense to gays, and no offense to people of different faiths or political views [3]. The demonstrators have been vandalized and burned in the Black Lives Matter movement, but the traditional American media and social media have been silent. Why? Black lives are expensive and dare not speak out. Biden has formed a luxurious harem group in the White House, and the U.S. media is afraid to speak out.
However, political correctness is not the law after all, government action and local courts are not the final arbiter, freedom of speech is fundamentally dependent on the Supreme Court’s decision. In Brandenburg v. Ohio, a case in which racist speech was extreme, the case was overturned by the Supreme Court because the state law was unconstitutional.
Look at another famous case, Texas v. Johnson, also known as the flag-burning case, in 1989.
In August 1984, Johnson, a member of an American association, burned an American flag in public during a protest against President Reagan. During the burning, Johnson and members of his group also chanted some slogans that insulted this country and the flag.
As a result, Johnson was arrested and charged with violating the state’s law prohibiting the “desecration of revered objects. Some of the bystanders present accused Johnson of offending their patriotic feelings by burning the flag. Ultimately, the judge sentenced Johnson to one year in prison.
However, Johnson appealed and the case went to the federal Supreme Court, which heard the case in 1989 and ultimately ruled in favor of the defendant’s innocence. Justice Brennan argued that flag-burning was also part of free speech and that it was expressing an assertion. In the ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s additional opinion received much attention: “We did it because it was the right thing to do from a legal and constitutional standpoint …… The flag is such an expression of a common American idea: law, peace, and the belief in freedom included in the human spirit This flag, therefore, also protects those who despise it.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling was so controversial that it forced the relevant flag protection laws in the 48 U.S. states and the District of Columbia to be invalidated as unconstitutional. The federal government, the president, Congress, state governments, state legislatures and many people strongly resisted. Congress soon passed another Flag Protection Act to protect the flag, but it was also declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and struck down. Subsequent attempts by Congress to amend the Constitution have failed, and the ruling remains in effect today.
In the United States, freedom of speech does not protect speech that insults others, but speech that insults this country and its flag. Jefferson said, “It is dissent that is the highest form of patriotism.” Justice Kennedy’s ruling went further: “This flag protects at the same time those who defy it.”
In the United States, where the government is democratically elected, there is no crime against the government. Even if one makes anti-national statements, insults the flag, opposes the war, or criticizes politics, as long as one does not violate Holmes’ “clear and present danger” doctrine, one is safe, at least at the Supreme Court level.
The biggest concern for people across the pond is inflammatory rumors, which are almost always the most controversial issue in free speech.
Consider one more case, the famous 1960 Sullivan case.
In March 1960, the New York Times ran a political propaganda ad calling on readers to support the black civil rights movement. The ad was partially inaccurate in that it showed police evicting protesting students, and Montgomery City Commissioner Sullivan sued the Times on behalf of the police, seeking damages for his reputation. The lawsuit went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Justice Brennan ultimately ruled against Sullivan. Why?
Justice Brennan used the “actual malice” doctrine. He argued that it is impossible for the news media to guarantee that every news story is true and error-free, and that statements that are merely factually incorrect need to be protected. This case was a landmark event in the history of human press freedom. Sullivan put an end to the notion of seditious libel in the United States, and “untruths” (rumors) that are not malicious are protected by law, maximizing the individual’s right to full expression.
The next question is, has the Internet changed the boundaries of free speech? Does the rapid spread of inflammatory rumors and intimidating statements on the Internet threaten the safety of individuals and society? From a legal standpoint, does the Internet fit into the “particular context” advocated by Justice Holmes?
Let’s look at one more case.
In 2010, Anthony Elonis of Pennsylvania wrote numerous threats against his ex-wife and threatened to kill her in a Facebook parody of the rapper. His threatening comments even involved past co-workers and children. That’s when he was approached by a female FBI agent who tried to investigate his true motives. Elonis became enraged and claimed on Facebook that he was going to slit the female agent’s throat with a knife.
Then, the federal prosecutor’s office brought Eronis to court. The case centered on whether the defendant’s scaremongering statements on the Internet were protected by the First Amendment. This is perhaps a new issue in the Internet age, and there is not much case law on which to base it. The court decided to activate the jury mechanism and leave the verdict to the public and common sense. As a result, the jury sentenced Eronis to 44 months in prison.
The defendant appealed and the case went to the Supreme Court, which in 2015 handed down a critical decision in the face of the 21st century free speech dilemma in the age of social media. By an overwhelming margin of seven concurring votes, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s conviction of Eronis.
By this point, we’re basically clear. The justices held that the Internet is not the particular environment Holmes was referring to and that social media has not changed the boundaries of free speech. In the Internet age, the boundaries of free speech in the United States remain the “clear and present danger” doctrine.
The founding fathers of the United States opened up a wide space for freedom of expression, and many distinguished federal judges set clear and strict boundaries for freedom of expression, so that all lies and truths, rumors and truths can be freely and fully played in the marketplace of ideas, allowing even the most humble individual to make his or her voice heard.
However, social media and technology giants, with censorship in hand, have become the arbiters of information, the arbiters of truth. They use algorithms to disseminate information that is favorable to them or that they believe to be true, and to restrict information that is unfavorable to them or that they believe to be untrue. But the U.S. Constitution does not give the giants this power of life and death.
First, under Brandenburg v. Ohio, social media does not have the power to restrict free speech. Trump has been critical of social media’s right to censor public opinion since he took office. Today the three major social media outlets are censoring information in a big way, censoring posts and blocking numbers in large numbers. This is already suspected of being unconstitutional, and this is especially true of traditional media outlets such as CNN, which have arbitrarily choked off live broadcasts and interviews with the elected president over the past few years simply because the speech was not in their interest.
Second, any blocking of Trump and his team would need to meet the above demanding conditions. Trump and his team’s original tweets and speeches (not paraphrased by online media) need to be reviewed for messages that incite violence and that are necessarily, directly, and “urgently unlawfully” related to the protesters’ seizure of Congress. According to past Supreme Court jurisprudence, this is almost impossible to establish (analyzed below).
So, while the borders of free speech in the United States are surprisingly large, the power of the establishment’s social media is just as great.
03
The power of tech giants
The blocking of Trump by U.S. tech giants has sent shivers down the spines of old European politicians. “The right to freedom of expression is of fundamental importance and this fundamental right can be restricted by law and legislature,” criticized a spokesman for Germany’s Angela Merkel, “and in light of this, the chancellor (Merkel) considers the permanent deactivation of the president’s account to be problematic” .
EU Internal Market Commissioner Bretton posted: “The fact that a CEO can pull the plug on the U.S. presidential speaker without any checks and balances is baffling. It not only confirms the power of these platforms, it also shows the profound weaknesses of our society in the digital space.”
They thought they were in control of the highest authority in this country, how could they know that this power is a crumb in the face of media power and in the face of tech giants. They, too, could be “politically dead” in a moment, just like Trump. Although they are the establishment, they do not control the technology giants in the United States. The rhetoric of European elder statesmen is aimed at the tech giants, not the establishment. The implication is that the power to restrict speech should be in our hands, not in the hands of the tech media. It can be predicted that giants such as Google and Facebook will encounter even tougher anti-trust sanctions in Europe.
From the fears of European elder statesmen, we can see that there is a super ruling power in the 21st century that transcends the state – the global establishment as well as multinational fintech giants. In this case, the media dominance of the tech giants has overridden the highest executive power in the United States. This is enough to put everyone in the world on alert. For information monopoly is one of the three powers of social enslavement and involution, and it is the most important ruling power.
I have analyzed in “The Anxiety of Involution” that three major systems of involution have developed in agrarian societies over the past few thousand years, namely class entrenchment, property rights restrictions and information monopolies. Compared with medieval Europe, the imperial examinations and civil official system in ancient China broke the class solidification and property rights restrictions to a certain extent, but because the royal family controlled this last gatekeeper, the information monopoly, in successive generations, it could not escape the millennium stagnation and millennium involution.
According to the records of the English Privy Council, from 1542 onward, the Council continued to punish a large number of “opponents” for “seditious speech” and other charges. The number of executions during the Reformation amounted to more than 70,000, about 2% of the population of England at that time. After Henry VIII, the Tudors used stationers to monopolize the newspaper industry in the name of national security, and weekly inspections were carried out on London printing houses.
It was the Reformation at the end of the 16th century that really opened up the human “canopy”, but the struggle for press freedom was extremely difficult. It was not until 1694, after the Glorious Revolution, that Parliament officially declared the License Act out of force, and mankind broke free of press control for the first time. Then the struggle shifted to the North American colonies before the Zenger case. After this case, North America ushered in the era of press freedom.
Human civilization originated from the creation of the subjective world, and breaking the monopoly of information is the source of all civilization and creation. The European Reformation unlocked the subjective world of mankind, and the freedom of the press broke the monopoly of information and opened the light of human wisdom. Jefferson made a classic statement during the Constitutional Convention: “The purpose of the new government is to protect the diversity of popular talents which is the origin of all kinds of property rights. [4] “It is sufficient to judge the goodness or badness of a government by this criterion alone.
Today, are establishment-led tech giants closing the windows on human intelligence?
First look at the right to censor.
Over the past few years, the U.S. tech giants have been criticized for their power to censor information, which is considered unconstitutional.
Let me tell a case in point. 2018 Jewish social activist Laura Loomer (600,000 Twitter followers) attacked Minnesota’s Muslim House of Representatives on Twitter. She was subsequently blocked from Twitter and most social media, even including the Uber taxi App. The incident sparked outrage from conservatives, many of whom turned to Parler.
Does Twitter have censorship powers?
Article I of the Constitutional Amendment does not give any agency the power to censor information, including the federal government, Twitter. the Anti-Espionage Act of 1917 is not unconstitutional, but the subject of its action is the government. In the Schenck case, Justice Holmes put a harsh yoke on the enforcers of this law. Even when the government charges someone under the law, it must strictly follow the “clear and present danger” principle.
Some say that Twitter is the equivalent of an e-commerce platform, and that posting false statements on it is the equivalent of a seller selling counterfeit goods, so shouldn’t the platform be regulated?
Look at another law, the Communications Regulation Act of 1996. Article 230 of this law is an exemption clause, social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are not responsible for the information published by users. Nor do these platforms have any authority to censor and regulate users’ information, based on the principle of equal responsibility.
Next, look at false information.
In early May 2020, Twitter intensified its “citizen integrity policy” based on the Communications Regulatory Act. Then Trump issued a related executive order: if social media is not responsible for what users post, it has no right to censor information. If social media is responsible as a publisher for censoring information posted by users, the government must strictly limit social media’s right to censor. This reinforces the equality of responsibility and power.
Twitter claims that the purpose of its “citizen integrity policy” is to combat disinformation. Its founder, Jack Dorsey, tweeted, “We will continue to point out incorrect or controversial information about elections around the world,” arguing that Twitter is not the arbiter of truth. However, Twitter has taken on the role of arbiter of truth. In response, Musk also alluded to Twitter.
The policy was introduced in May, when a Trump tweet was tagged with a warning with blue exclamation marks. The tweet was about how mail-in ballots could lead to serious fraud and rigged elections. The tweet challenging the mail-in ballots did not constitute disinformation.
Under Sullivan, the Supreme Court protects disinformation that is not subjective and malicious. The justices set the broad boundaries of free speech, aiming to leave the adjudication of lies and truth, rumor and truth, to the free and competitive marketplace of ideas, not to the government, corporations or any individual. Twitter has no right to censor, flag, restrict and remove any allegedly false information. Is Twitter suspected of interfering with the election by introducing this policy near the election and censoring and restricting the flow of some information?
Thirdly, let’s look at the issue of blocking.
Regardless of the fact that Twitter does not have the right to block numbers, according to Holmes’ “clear and present danger” principle, Trump and his team’s tweets must have a direct, immediate and urgent relationship to the creation of violence, and the violence must be quite serious.
On Jan. 6, the day of the congressional takeover, Trump’s Twitter account was banned. After being unblocked the next day, Trump posted a video about asking protesters to remain calm and acknowledge the excesses of the 20th to the new administration. two tweets on the 8th were “Make America Great Again” and “Not going to the 20th inauguration” and did not involve incitement to messages of violence. But immediately afterwards, Twitter permanently blocked Trump’s account.
The reason Twitter gave was that after Trump’s recent tweets, “particularly how they were received and interpreted on and off Twitter – because of the risk of further incitement to violence – we have permanently deactivated the account.” The criteria for judging tweets are not the original text, but the “false information” that has been interpreted and the risk of “further” incitement to violence, which falls far short of Holmes’ “clear and present danger “principle. If this were allowed, Twitter could ban everyone for it. He could say there is a risk of incitement to violence if your comments are interpreted.
Trump tweeted from the official White House presidential account after his personal account was blocked, slamming Twitter for suppressing free speech. The tweet, which also did not involve violence, much less touch the boundaries of free speech, was deleted by Twitter in seconds. Note that this account is the official account of the White House. During World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspired people to fight bravely through his daily broadcasts. It’s hard to imagine what would happen to this country if Churchill’s radio line was ever unplugged.
Finally, look at the tech giants doing evil.
I reveal this in my article “The Age of the Information Cocoon: Bias, Tearing and Hordes”. These tech giants have used algorithms to compile a comfortable information cocoon for each individual. In their own information cocoons, each person sees what they want to see, listens to what they want to hear, and repeats those pleasant sounds over and over again like an echo wall. However, this comfort will eventually pay a heavy price, as people become more and more closed and ignorant, and society becomes more and more torn and rogue, and is controlled and played by these giants.
In “Algorithms as Exploitation,” I argue that the tech giants are able to do this because of the gratuitous appropriation and misuse of users’ personal data. Some people believe that data on the web should belong to governments (public) or platforms, not private individuals.
Some economists see this as a matter of initial data property rights and assign data property rights to platforms on the basis of Coase’s law “whoever uses it well returns it to them”. This is wrong. The data already exists offline, and the property rights are extremely clear.
For example, in an offline transaction, both parties will sign a contract with a copy of their business license or ID card. This data (name, phone number, etc.) is also submitted to the platform when shopping online, and it is private data. When the contract is signed offline, the back of the business license or ID card copy will be marked “for this contract only”. This limits the misuse of personal data. Even if it is not marked, it is still illegal for such information to be misused (whether offline or online). However, personal information is misused privately by the platform.
Another example is that when we shop at IKEA, every action is data, which belongs to the individual, created at the cost of the user’s time, and cannot be stolen and misused by IKEA. However, the online platform recorded every action of the user and misused it for algorithmic marketing.
In 2014, Twitter sued the U.S. federal government for forcing them to hand over user data. The company refused several times at first on the grounds of protecting user data, but was eventually pressured to hand it over, and then Twitter sued the federal government.
This is another case where national security and free speech are at stake. The government was concerned with national security and Twitter countered with the First Amendment. The Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of Twitter. Many celebrated the fact that the First Amendment had once again withstood the government’s crackdown in the name of national security, and that Twitter had withstood the pressure to defend user data and free speech.
But users rejoiced too soon. Twitter has replaced the elected government as the bigger “dragon” that interferes with free speech. Here is a set of data: Twitter’s Transparency Report for the first half of 2017 shows that from August 2015 to June 2017, Twitter blocked a total of 935,897,000 accounts suspected of promoting terrorism. Of these accounts, less than 1% were blocked at the request of the government [5].
On the surface Twitter is the vanguard of the anti-terrorist force, on the back is that Twitter controls a greater power of life and death than the government. Victor Mayer-Schönberg, a British big data expert, predicted in The Age of Big Data that big data power would challenge the supremacy of democratic governments [6].
Today, big data power is in the hands of tech giants, who have shown their control over the highest executive power of government in this matter. If you sign up for a new account on Twitter, the recommended accounts to follow are mostly Democratic or establishment, such as Hillary, with very few conservative accounts. If you see a negative piece of information about Trump or Biden on Facebook or Twitter, the next push is mostly negative information about it. The tech giants control the sources and distribution of information, and use algorithms to “feed” individuals information that could potentially manipulate the election.
In this case, social media are limiting the distribution of traffic to hashtags such as “stop stealing,” “Patriot Party,” and “election fraud,” which are backed by opposition, skepticism, and complaints about the election. Behind these hashtags is opposition, skepticism and accusations. Every election has had its share of skepticism, and the 2016 election’s “Russiagate” accusations by Democrats against Trump have been spreading across the web. The tech giants act as information controllers and arbiters of truth, spreading information that is good for them and restricting and banning information that is bad for them. Behind them stand the forces of the global establishment.
In the past four years, Trump has sent a total of 25,000 tweets, 200 a day at the height of the frenzy; appointments and dismissals of senior officials are issued by Twitter. This is Twitter rule. Twitter rule is the most simple and brutal way for this political man to fight. The biggest advantage of Twitter rule is to tear through the hypocrisy of the establishment’s on-stage one thing and off-stage another, and national events are announced directly to the public on Twitter. Trump once tweeted that he wanted to “drain the swamp” and dig out the “deep state” controlled behind the scenes, pointing the finger at the Clintons and their establishment forces. Now, in one fell swoop, Twitter has erased these traces and Trump is instantly “politically dead.
In “The Truth About America,” I argue that this fight goes beyond bipartisanship, race, religion and country. It is a 21st century struggle against the global establishment. In addition to the collective blocking of public opinion, technology and financial giants such as Apple and Google have stopped their political contributions in support of pressuring the Republican Party to participate in Trump’s impeachment. The Republican establishment McConnell is happy to see this happen. Some people say these are conspiracy theories. To understand this issue does require some knowledge of economics, law and abstract logic, such as the logic of monetary expansion. I will explain this in detail in my next article.
From “Animal Farm” to “1984”, everyone in the world should be alert to the blocking actions of the establishment and the tech giants, and anyone who is complacent on the part of the state or party can be treated in the same way. Once the human “sky cap” is closed by the algorithm, what Madison calls “the diversity of human talent” and human civilization will disappear, replaced by the mild slavery of the information cocoon.
There is no point in talking if you can’t voice dissent. As Jefferson said, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
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