Myanmar recently used the ubiquity of Facebook in its country – where many of its citizens confuse Facebook with the Internet itself – to pursue a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Earlier this year, Facebook became a de facto arm of the United States government, refusing to host anti-lockdown protest content for events it determined would violate local ordinances on social distancing – curtailing speech that would be constitutionally protected otherwise. (Facebook took no such action against Black Lives Matter events that violated local social distancing orders.) But the network effects of these platforms – how they shape behavior – persist regardless of whether one uses the platform or not. So many people use them that the platforms can shape and alter society around the individuals, rather than through them, colluding at times with the government. When the scope and control of speech rise to this scale – where it directs behavior in large swaths of society for ideological ends, and when the alternatives exist but are so tiny as to be functionally irrelevant – the point that it’s “not really censorship unless it’s done by the state” becomes purely semantic. It requires one to deny the obvious fact that most human interactions are increasingly
that any genuine criticism we might have about this re-formed order of things means only that we are too dumb to understand “how free speech is supposed to work.” IDEOLOGICAL MONOPOLIES Defenders of Big Tech claim that such private censorship is a harmless exercise of the First Amendment, and that those unhappy with the moderation decisions can merely opt out, or, even better, build their own Facebook. Moreover, they say, private platforms are distinct from the government, from whom you cannot opt out, and which can use violence to imprison you. But such an argument ignores the broader network effects of these platforms – how they change free thought and behavior – as well as the fact that merely “opting out” is hardly an option. These companies are de facto monopolies, and the various antitrust lawsuits filed against Google and Facebook suggest they are per se monopolies, as well. Alternatives exist, but they provide no real competition. Opting out of Google, whose services are embedded in nearly every app on your phone and whose ads gather information on billions of individuals across the Internet, is virtually impossible if you live in the modern world. But the network effects of these platforms – how they shape behavior – persist regardless of whether one uses the platform or not. So many people use them that the platforms can shape and alter society around the individuals, rather than through them, colluding at times with the government.
American Consequences
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