Thread by @BrendanCarrFCC

Meet your new speech police!

Facebook now has an Oversight Board empowered to take down posts.

Gotta be non-partisan people, right? Nope!

1 is Pam Karlan: testified to impeach @POTUS, “baron” Trump line, Obama DOJ, & NYT calls “full-throated, unapologetic liberal torchbearer.”

2. Facebook’s decision undermines its claim that posts won’t be censored for partisan political reasons.

Karlan testified that “President Trump must be held to account.”

She wrote *in 2016* that she felt “a responsibility to challenge [Trump] in the court of public opinion.”

3. No partisan, political agenda? It’s not even hidden:

Here’s board member Alan Rusbridger joining the left-wing campaign to take the President’s coronavirus briefings off the air & rooting for his removal from office.

Facebook gives this guy the power to take down your posts?

4. Surely, Rusbridger’s work to shut down the President’s speech is an outlier on Facebook’s “free expression” board? Not a pattern here, right?

Nope!

Here’s Nicolas Suzor saying “it’s complicated” when asked if Twitter should deplatform the President.

5. Fine. But Facebook wouldn’t put someone from the George Soros network of Open Society organizations on its speech police board.

I mean, even Facebook needs room to deny there’s a partisan political bias and agenda here ... right?

Ooh boy:

6. At least that’s it, right? No other speech czar holds such a deeply partisan animus.

Hardly.

Meet Maina Kiai who views Trump supporters this way:

“I think that Donald Trump is the jewel in the crown of the far right, fascist, xenophobic, right-wing groups that exist.”

7. Honestly, this one shocked me: Jamal Greene

Facebook hand picked him to censor posts ahead of the election.

His worldview:

➡️ Fantasizes about Trump getting shot

➡️ Calls Trump’s election an unacceptable outcome & a failure of American politics

➡️ Pressed for impeachment

8. Folks, this is from a few minutes worth of review. And there’s much more on him.

Jamal Greene - a guy Facebook wants filtering your posts - says it shows “mental clarity and good judgment” to believe Trump is an “odious person who should not be anywhere near the presidency.”

9. Another person Facebook picked to decide what you can post ahead of the election - Nighat Dad.

➡️ Calls Trump “evil”

➡️ Wants to #BanTrump and “build a wall around” him.

➡️ Says it’s “sad to see what kind of country” America has become.

➡️ Endorsed Bernie

No bias there!

10. I’m just going down the line here, folks. And fitting right in is new Facebook Oversight Board Member - Julie Owono.

She’s wishing for a quick and *four year* Trump presidency.

Do these posts give you confidence that her censorship decisions won’t reflect a political bias?

11. Ok, next up is CATO’s John Samples. Phew, at least he won’t have the same hardened views.

Nope.

➡️ Thinks people voted for Trump b/c, like the Flight 93 passengers on 9/11, they thought they were going to die anyways.

➡️ Removing “incompetent” Trump “may well be justified”

12. The new Facebook @OversightBoard deleted their tweet after I posted this reply. So now you can longer view my tweet at all on their timeline.

It would appear things are off to a good start in terms of their tolerance and support for free expression.