Thread by @AriCohn

1/ Claremont continues to send its...uh...best (such as it is) with this rather flimsy and unserious piece from Larry Greenfield in @JewishJournal's 'The Speech Project.'

jewishjournal.com/commentary/336…

2/ Greenfield's piece, titled "Big Tech is Big Trouble," leads off with talk of Aristotle, tyranny, totalitarianism, fascist, communists, and China, which is how you can be sure that this will be a very rational, level-headed read.

3/ Sure enough, he segues directly into the so-called "Big 5" of tech companies who he calls "the new rulers of our information age."

It's hard to tell if he's complaining that companies are recording "voluntary actions and thoughts." The sentence is unclear in its purpose.

4/ But lo, a point that is well-taken! Greenfield is right: there are well-founded concerns, and important conversations to be had, about data collection and privacy. Unfortunately you can probably tell that this isn't what his piece is about.

5/ For someone who was just railing against the evils of communism, invoking "cyber capitalism" like this seems...odd. Also, what exactly does he mean by "incite" us? What exactly are tech companies inciting us to do?

6/ And now we get to his main gripe, which by now should be obvious is really that people don't get to say whatever they want on whatever website they want.

7/ Yes, Larry. Just like you are the arbiter of what may or may not be said in your house, the owners of websites likewise get to choose what to allow. That's how the whole private property thing works. And yes, PragerU lost that lawsuit because YouTube is not the government.

8/ Parler was kicked out of app stores and AWS because they didn't comply with their agreements with those companies. And guess what, it's back.

You know whose had a bit less of a tough time? Gab, which—whatever you think of it—smartly decided to host on its own servers.

9/ Here's where Greenfield gives up his game. His argument is fundamentally about having a right to...well whatever you *prefer* on someone's property, or a right to the audience assembled there.

10/ If Parler had not been booted and enjoyed high user acquisition, Greenfield would still not have been happy, because it doesn't matter if there's an alternative where you can speak freely. He wants to do it on his terms, on your property. Nothing less will suffice!

11/ Also it's laughable that he claims people are now unable to follow organizations and public figures that they want. There are plenty of ways to follow who you want, whether on other platforms, their individual websites, etc.

12/ More hysterics. You'd almost think Larry believes that the Facebook police is going to come take him away for a conversation he had with his neighbor on his front lawn.

And Larry, if there are at least five companies you're complaining about...it isn't a monopoly.

13/ I suppose when you're speaking to the audience Greenfield is, citing to Dershowitz seems like a good idea. But of course this is nonsense. There is no platform vs. publisher distinction in Section 230. Websites simply are not liable as publishers for user-generated content.

14/ That was a policy choice that takes into account the fact that the Internet is vastly more expansive than anything we've known, and that applying the same liability standards as "other media companies" would be senseless.

15/ Greenfield tries to cabin Section 230 by claiming it was only meant to allow for moderating certain types of content, which of course happens to be the ones he thinks are fine to be "censored."

16/ Query if Larry thinks that lying about the outcome of an election and convincing people it was stolen so that they mounted an insurrection at the capitol causes "irreparable harm to society."

My bet: it depends on the political party that did it!

17/ Now Greenfield gives six options for "addressing the abuse of free speech by Big Tech" with vanishing little substantive discussion, and more mindless repetition of things he read online somewhere.

18/ Does this actually *say* anything other than repeating the disinformation that a company doesn't get #Section230 protection if it isn't neutral?

Also how does "breaking up companies" or "large fines" enforce "repealing Section 230?" That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

19/ Again, what?!? Here's why, Larry: Because this isn't 'Nam, there are rules. Namely, the laws that make it a civil rights violation for a physical place of public accommodation (which doesn't include websites, by the way) to discriminate on the basis of race.

20/ It's not "violative of civil rights" ("denial of equal access" is so meaningless that it's hard to reply to) to prevent someone from "joining a platform." But while we're on the subject, how can it be "the" modern town public square (lol) if there are several of them?

21/ Ye Olde Common Carrier is an argument that many latch on to and few understand. Websites aren't common carriers, and trying to force them to treat all speech equally would violate the First Amendment. See more here: lawfareblog.com/wall-street-jo… & here: lawfareblog.com/justice-thomas…\...\

22/ Of the five states Larry claims to have enacted legislation, only *one* actually has, and it has nothing to do with "big tech censorship." Utah & North Dakota killed their bills, Florida's hasn't been signed, and Texas hasn't passed anything yet. This is just sloppy. Yikes.

23/ Never mind the fact that Section 230 preempts all of the state laws that try to create liability for how websites moderate content. I'm guessing Larry has never read Section 230. But that's just a guess.

24/ This is breathtaking. The Fairness Doctrine applied to telegraph, telephones, and cable? No it certainly didn't. The kicker: Greenfield founded the Reagan Legacy Foundation! So he has no idea what the Fairness Doctrine was, and seems to be unaware that Reagan's FCC killed it!

25/ And no, social media companies are not broadcasters. The Fairness Doctrine applied to broadcast spectrum licensees. It was constitutional only because broadcast spectrum is a scarce and publicly-owned resource. The Fairness Doctrine could not be applied to websites.

26/ Leaving aside the fact that Citizens United didn't create the concept of corporations having First Amendment rights (we already know Greenfield doesn't have a clue), yes--competition is the answer. How exactly does Larry think they aren't freely competing?

27/ We end as we began. This article is a bunch of uneducated and patently and demonstrably false nonsense sandwiched between paragraphs of hysteria.

I hope there wasn't any editorial oversight by @JewishJournal because if there was, it sure didn't involve substance.

I can't get over this one. The jump from "if a restaurant can't refuse a black person service" to "therefore it's a civil rights violation for a social media company to ban any user" is just exquisitely moronic.

Oh wait, I almost forgot the part where he goes the for long jump record, wondering if social media content moderation will lead to the *government* throwing people in jail for speech.