Slippery Slopes-- Freedom Of Speech And Facebook And Trumpanzee

No jail for the incendiary crap Alex Jones puts on social media. In fact, free speech purists are freaking out that his garbage has been banned by Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, etc. Friday, Roy Gutterman, a professor and free speech advocate wrote that kicking Alex Jones off Facebook "may have opened a new, potentially dangerous door in the digital world where free speech conflicts with good taste, legitimate information and even downright human decency. Jones shot to notoriety through his far-right wing website, InfoWars, which touted outrageous conspiracy theories, misinformation and vitriolic material that many have interpreted as hateful. Though hate speech is neither illegal nor well-defined in the United States, Jones' outrageous and offensive postings have found him removed from Facebook's community of 2.2 billion users."

It is not easy to defend Jones' brand of vitriol and conspiracy theories. In the ever-evolving debate over "fake news," misinformation and hate speech, Jones contributes to all three. Some argue that this sort of content adds nothing to the discussion of important public issues and should not have a place in the marketplace of ideas. Elements of that argument may be valid, but it also diminishes the role of such material in the marketplace. It fuels debate, forces us to confront varying and sometimes ugly viewpoints and counter them with more speech.

...Even with the Facebook ban, Jones will not be without an audience or devoted followers. He still has his website, app and radio platforms and a legion of fans. But Facebook's ban raises concerns, regardless of how civil society may view Jones. By trying to make Facebook a safe space, devoid of offensive or hateful speech, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is almost single-handedly deciding to silence unpopular speech.

In another era, it might not have been so unusual to freeze out a host of speakers and ignore some hot-button, controversial or political issues by not covering them in the newspaper or on television, or closing down editorial pages sympathetic to their causes. This was a dominant tactic in the South during the fight for civil rights, where speakers were both censored and punished for their political views.

The internet, however, has equalized the media landscape, providing speakers, writers and consumers with innumerable platforms for expression and communication. Social media is an integral part of the equation.

But when a social media behemoth like Facebook decides to ban certain players, no matter how offensive, we are treading precariously close to the slippery slope. Once these platforms start excluding some speakers today, the question is, who will be excluded tomorrow?

He concludes that "If we truly believe in free speech, the marketplace of ideas must be open to even the most offensive speakers." I was awarded a defender of free speech award by the ACLU once. And this week I was happy when I saw that the moron fake president declassified self-serving Nunes memos on the Steele dossier that now make it incumbent on the FBI to declassify to declassify the reality-based memos. Josh Gerstein wrote that "the FBI has lost its authority to rebuff Freedom of Information Act requests about the bureau’s efforts to verify the report’s intelligence linking Trump to Russia during the 2016 campaign, a federal judge ruled on Thursday."

U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta previously blessed the FBI’s decision to refuse such FOIA requests by declining to confirm whether any records exist about aspects of its handling of the hotly contested dossier, prepared by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The judge ruled in January that Trump’s tweets about the dossier did not require the FBI and other intelligence agencies to be more responsive to public records requests on the issue.

However, Mehta said Trump’s actions in February to greenlight the release of one memo from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) and a separate memo from the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, left untenable the FBI’s position of resisting disclosure.

“It remains no longer logical nor plausible for the FBI to maintain that it cannot confirm nor deny the existence of documents” related to attempts to verify information in the dossier, Mehta wrote in a 13-page opinion.

This is the kind of free speech the Founding fathers were talking about when they drafted the constitution's first amendment (which guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely.) I have to admit I don't grok Facebook. I get annoyed when people try to contact me on it and ask them to e-mail me, text me or call me on the phone. I just find Facebook annoying, random and filled with unreliable information-- largely by fools for fools. That said, I was shocked to learn that people go the jail-- real jail, not virtual jail-- for things they write on Facebook.

Business Insider gave 7 examples of young Facebook users who went to prison for stuff they wrote on Facebook. I can even understand a couple of them-- one guy who claimed-- albeit sarcastically-- that he was going to shoot up a kindergarten. Two other guys were sentenced to 4 years each for trying to encourage a riot. "Many people exercise poor judgement on Facebook," wrote Alyson Shontell, "a site where Freedom of Speech may no longer apply. Recently, young Facebook users who have posted controversial status messages have ended up in jail. Sometimes the messages they typed were actually offensive. Other times they were jokes gone terribly wrong. One teen was even arrested for posting violent rap lyrics. Most of the time, the Facebook offenders are impulsive. They type before they think, and lately they've had to pay serious consequences."

This one seems really silly though:

Cameron D'Ambrosio, 18, is a high school student who is also an aspiring rapper. The Massachusettes native posted some of his lyrics on Facebook and was initially arrested without bail. He was told what he posted was a "terroristic threat." The lyrics read: "F--- a boston bombinb [sic] wait til u see the sh-- I do, I'ma be famous for rapping, and beat every murder charge that comes across me."

When the prosector took him before a grand jury for an indictment, they refused and threw out the "case." That really is government trying to interfere with free speech and expression.