On Chinese censors, Facebook's rigging of national narratives, and self-defense
And also David Brooks finds me terrifying
Good morning! I have three new pieces to share this week.
The first was published on Friday and discusses YouTube’s continued de-monetization efforts around content that criticizes China. The platform recently de-monetized (that is, stripped ads) from a segment of the YouTube show Breaking Points after they discussed the disappearance of Chinese tennis star, Peng Shuai. But that effort is just part of a larger pattern of Google (which owns YouTube) bending the knee to China’s censors. I also discussed this issue this morning on Rising.
The second essay, published late yesterday in the New York Post, is a brief look at Facebook’s role in rigging national narratives around major cultural events — and then turning out to be wrong. Will there be accountability? No, not unless Congress imposes some.
I also have an essay out this morning looking at the left’s unhinged attempts to come for the Second Amendment and the right to self-defense. This is not only in the wake of the Rittenhouse trial, but reflects a broader effort to condition and stratify a core constitutional entitlement, turning it from a right into a privilege reserved for the rich and powerful. I do not consider myself a “gun nut,” as it were, but I take very seriously the right to self-defense as a required condition of a free and democratic society.
Finally, some of you may have caught David Brooks’ recent summary of the National Conservatism conference in The Atlantic magazine, where he clutches his pearls over the “terrifying future of the American right” — highlighting my remarks, in particular. (You can read my remarks here, watch them here, and for a much shorter version, watch my brief speech at last month’s gala for The American Conservative.)
Anyway, in lieu of my own rebuttal to Brooks, I’ll offer Jon Gabriel’s, because I couldn’t have said it better.
Thanks, as always, for reading. And Happy Thanksgiving!
Rachel
YouTube Penalizes ‘Breaking Points’ For Criticizing China Over Disappearing Peng Shuai
On Friday, they were at it again. Google’s YouTube announced it was de-monetizing -- that is, removing ads -- from a segment of the popular YouTube show 'Breaking Points.'
All of America’s tech giants have a fraught relationship with China, but perhaps none more so than Google. While the company performatively plays to the American norms of standing for freedom of speech and human dignity, when pressed they are more than happy to bend the knee to Chinese censors.
On Friday, they were at it again. Google’s YouTube announced it was de-monetizing — that is, removing ads — from a segment of the popular YouTube show Breaking Points. The show’s two hosts, Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball, had run a segment discussing the disappearance of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, after she accused a senior Chinese Communist Party official of rape.
“After manually reviewing your video,” YouTube wrote to Breaking Points, “we’ve confirmed that it isn’t suitable for all advertisers. As a result, it will continue to run limited or no ads.”
The segment will still play. But the show, which supports itself on a combination of premium subscribers and advertising, won’t make any advertising money. In other words, YouTube has decided that the show should be financially punished for criticizing China.
This isn’t the first time YouTube has engaged in overt censorship on behalf of the communist regime. Last year, YouTube was busted automatically deleting comments containing certain Chinese-language phrases critical of the CCP. The practice had been going on for roughly a year when YouTube acknowledged it was “an error in our enforcement systems.” Okay.
But, notably with the Breaking Points video, YouTube confirmed its demonetization after a manual review. That is, there was no automated enforcement, no quirk of the algorithm, to blame. The individuals on Google’s content moderation team reviewed the video and objectively determined it would be demonetized. As a policy matter, Google made an institutional choice to penalize user content critical of China’s human rights abuses.
When asked about the demonetization by the Free Beacon, Enjeti speculated that the word “rape” in the title may have flagged the video. But he went on:
‘It’s possible that this could be the result of influence from the CCP,’ Enjeti told the Free Beacon. ‘Or, at the very least, YouTube has to understand advertisers like Nike and other massive multinationals may be worried’ about running ads alongside stories critical of the regime. Enjeti said the incident highlights how much power tech companies have to determine what news is appropriate.
Google Is Hedging Its Bets With China
This isn’t the first time Google has chosen China over user content and free speech values, and it won’t be the last. What Google wants, most of all, is access to the Chinese market, and it’s generally willing to make the sacrifices necessary to accommodate a murderous regime along the way.
The company, which does not operate in China currently, previously maintained a censored version of its search engine in China between 2006 to 2010. The late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) accused Google and three other American tech companies of “nauseating collaboration with a regime of repression” while noting that “this value-free excuse truly sickens me.” Facing such congressional scrutiny, Google pulled the plug on the project.
But Google’s interest in accessing the Chinese market didn’t stop. In 2018, The Intercept reported on an effort by the company to create a version of its search engine that complied with Chinese censorship. Project Dragonfly, as it was known, blacklisted “websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest.” The company canceled the project only after an outcry from their own employees.
Earlier this year, the streaming giant banned a human rights group with millions of views for sharing testimonials from people who say their families have disappeared in China’s Xinjiang region. There is documented evidence of China engaging in overt human rights abuses in Xinjiang, including genocide against its minority Uyghur Muslim population — a genocide that the United States officially recognized in January.
Yet for YouTube, discussion of these Chinese government atrocities constitutes“cyberbullying and harassment.” YouTube restored the channel after inquiries from Reuters and Human Rights Watch, but as of June, had removed about 975 of the channel’s videos.
Google’s Bootlicking Comes At A Cost
Google is not alone among Big Tech actors willing to compromise American values for access to the Chinese marketplace. Apple, which assembles nearly all of its products in China, has shared consumer data with the Chinese government and removed apps from its App Store at their request. The company is also alleged to use Chinese slaves in its supply chains.
But Google is unique in that its proponents assert its status as a “national champion” against Chinese cyber aggression. Breaking up Google, or otherwise managing its anticompetitive behavior with public policy, would “set us back against China,” to quote Google’s former CEO, Eric Schmidt.
But this is a company that is clearly hedging its bets with China — not the United States. Google has, famously, refused to work with the Department of Defense on artificial intelligence projects. Meanwhile, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford told a Senate committee in 2019 that “the work Google is doing in China is indirectly benefiting the Chinese military.”
“Frankly,” he went on, “‘indirect may not be a full characterization of the way it really is, it is more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military.”
So it should come as no surprise that Google is again choosing China over America’s speech values — and genuine human rights concern for the fate of Peng Shuai. When a company shows you what they’re about, believe them.
And Google has shown us again and again that their priority isn’t free expression, or even free people. No, their priority is bootlicking for whatever regime can make them billions — even if it happens to be America’s biggest geostrategic and economic adversary and one of the world’s most authoritarian countries.
Rachel Bovard is The Federalist's senior tech columnist and the senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute.
How many times must Facebook be caught censoring the truth?
Rachel Bovard
In 2019, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stood at Georgetown University and pledged to “fight to uphold as wide a definition of freedom of expression as possible,” promising in uncertainty to “err on the side of greater expression.” He went on, “I don’t think most people want to live in a world where you can only post things that tech companies judge to be 100 percent true.”
Such declarations seem almost quaint now, if not outright lies.
In the wake of the 2020 election, COVID-19 and every remotely controversial event that has followed, Twitter, Facebook and Google — America’s premier speech platforms, which house and shape our national discourse — have taken the decidedly opposite approach, limiting the free flow of information, dialogue and any opinion that runs counter to what the Silicon Valley speech gods and their army of partisan fact-checkers have singlehandedly determined as fact.
Speech, as such, is no longer allowed on the platforms. Just correct speech. And under the great dystopian valance that cloaks America’s major speech venues, the speech the platforms deem correct often turns out to be demonstrably wrong.
Consider how Facebook, in particular, treated the circumstances surrounding Kyle Rittenhouse, the teen acquitted last week of all charges in the self-defense killings of two men and the shooting of another during last summer’s riots in Kenosha, Wis. Immediately after the incident occurred, and despite video evidence which made a self-defense charge instantly plausible, Facebook declared it a “mass murder” and under that justification blocked searches for Rittenhouse’s name and any content in “praise or support” for him on the site — including links to contribute to his legal defense and videos purporting to show Rittenhouse providing aid to protesters.
In other words, Facebook determined that the only speech allowed on its platform was to declare Rittenhouse’s guilt, not his innocence. Perhaps prompted by Facebook’s actions or merely in spite of them, PayPal cut off affiliation with fundraising efforts for Rittenhouse, and so did GoFundMe.
PolitiFact, a Facebook-affiliated arbiter of facts, declared it was “false” that Rittenhouse was in legal possession of his firearm. The “fact-checker” did so by failing to account for exceptions in Wisconsin law which made his possession legal. (The gun charge was thrown out during the trial for the same reasons.)
A jury has acquitted Rittenhouse on all charges — those brought by the prosecutors and by Facebook — so now what? Will all the accounts which were banned or otherwise punished for speaking in his defense be reinstated? Will the self-righteous fact-checkers at PolitiFact be held accountable in any way? Will Facebook admit it was wildly wrong or simply pretend like it didn’t make a blundering, ham-fisted judgment about Rittenhouse absent any due process, one which contributed to shaping a false national narrative?
This isn’t the first time Facebook has been spectacularly wrong on an issue of national importance. Remember the COVID lab-leak theory? Throughout 2020, Facebook shut down and banned discussion that COVID-19 originated in a leak from a lab in Wuhan on the grounds that it was a dangerous conspiracy theory. In May, the company was forced to reverse itself after “experts” suddenly determined the theory to be credible.
“When does ‘misinformation’ stop being misinformation on social media?” asked The Wall Street Journal. The answer, said the editorial board, is “when Democratic government authorities give permission.”
And therein lies the rub for Facebook, which is decidedly no longer the bastion of free speech its founder once proclaimed. It is a central hub of America’s discourse, one which bears no accountability for being wrong about major cultural questions — despite the fact that in doing so, it becomes the purveyor of misinformation it deems only others to be.
Justice Louis Brandeis, in his famous 1927 concurrence in Whitney v. California, hit upon the essence of robust speech as its own corrective measure. “If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies,” he wrote, “the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
Facebook, it seems, has lost the plot. Absent policy measures to break Facebook’s scale, limit the platform’s ideological moderation or legal changes which give users more accountability, it is unlikely to get it back.
Rachel Bovard is the senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute and the senior tech columnist for The Federalist.
Leftists’ Reaction To The Rittenhouse Verdict Show Us Exactly What They Believe About Constitutional Rights
The left doesn't want a country where constitutionally protected liberty means an individual doesn’t have to pass a test to exercise their rights – they want compliance to a political agenda.
By now, it’s become obvious how far the media narrative of what happened to Kyle Rittenhouse diverged from the reality of what happened to Kyle Rittenhouse. What was clear from video footage released shortly after the incident became crystalline with witness testimony at the trial: Rittenhouse was pursued and attacked by the two men he killed, and the third pointed a loaded gun at him and advanced prior to Rittenhouse firing at him.
Townhall’s Julio Rosas got it right when he noted, “If you are in shock over the verdict, get better news sources.” And if you still harbor the sentiment that it was irresponsible of Rittenhouse to be there, this dispatch from The Federalist’s Evita Duffy is indispensable reading. The adults in Kenosha failed. The media failed. Gov. Tony Evers failed. The only thing standing between Kenosha and anarchy were armed business owners.
The right of self-defense is no more vital than in these moments when the structures communities have set up to protect themselves turn their backs on citizens with the urging and encouragement of political leaders.
Despite whatever anger President Joe Biden might express about the jury’s verdict, the 12 jurors in this trial focused on the facts and the law, and chose justice, even after threats were made against them, against the city, and corrupt media narratives continued to circulate with the aid of social media giants which were still banning accounts who spoke in Rittenhouse’s defense. Together, these 12 jurors bravely chose justice over the mob.
In doing so, these 12 displayed more courage than nearly all of our politicians and every single one of our media elite. Once again, we are reminded that the best of America resides not in our coastal power centers, our ivory towers, or even here in our nation’s capital. The best of America resides in the inherent fairness, righteousness, and bravery of her citizens.
But it’s worth focusing on where the left goes next. Because they don’t intend to let this jury verdict be the last word. Hours after the verdict was handed down, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) was calling it “a miscarriage of justice” and calling for federal review of the verdict by Merrick Garland’s heavily politicized Department of Justice.
The media narrative, meanwhile, has turned toward decrying “gun laws” and the ability of a 17-year-old to carry an “assault rifle,” and is openly conflating the right to self-defense with “vigilantism.” In other words, they’re saying it out loud: they’re coming for your guns, for your right to defend your family, and ultimately, for your sovereignty.
In early November, the Supreme Court heard arguments in New York Rifle & Pistol Association Inc v. Bruen. The question before the court is whether New York’s concealed carry permit regime, which requires the petitioner to show a “genuine, specific need” to concealed carry a firearm for self-defense and vests the ability to judge that need in a state bureaucrat, violates the Second Amendment.
During the argument, it became abundantly clear how the left views the Second Amendment — that is, a constitutional entitlement that grants each of us an unambiguous right to carry by virtue of our citizenship.
JUSTICE ALITO: Could I explore what that means for ordinary law-abiding citizens who feel they need to carry a firearm for self-defense? So I want you to think about people like this, people who work late at night in Manhattan, it might be somebody who cleans offices, it might be a doorman at an apartment, it might be a nurse or an orderly, it might be somebody who washes dishes. None of these people has a criminal record. They’re all law-abiding citizens. They get off work around midnight, maybe even after midnight. They have to commute home by subway, maybe by bus. When they arrive at the subway station or the bus stop, they have to walk some distance through a high-crime area, and they apply for a license, and they say: Look, nobody has told — has said I am going to mug you next Thursday. However, there have been a lot of muggings in this area, and I am scared to death. They do not get licenses, is that right?
UNDERWOOD [NY State Solicitor General]: That is in general right, yes. If there’s nothing particular to them, that’s right.
JUSTICE ALITO: How is that consistent with the core right to self-defense, which is protected by the Second Amendment?
UNDERWOOD: Because the core right to self-defense doesn’t — as — as this Court said, doesn’t allow for all to — to be armed for all possible confrontations in all places.
JUSTICE ALITO: No, it doesn’t, but does it mean that there is the right to self-defense for celebrities and state judges and retired police officers but pretty much not for the kind of ordinary people who have a real, felt need to carry a gun to protect themselves?
The exchange goes on, with Underwood hemming and hawing that the presence of a crowded subway somehow moots the right of ordinary people to self-defense, and Alito pointing out that there are thousands of people in New York City with illegal firearms who take the subway and pose a risk to unarmed travelers every day.
It’s an illuminating exchange that demonstrates just how conditional and stratified the left wants to make a constitutionally entitled right. They don’t want a country where constitutionally protected liberty means an individual doesn’t have to pass a test to exercise their rights, they want compliance to a political agenda. Under their vision, the right to self-defense would be left only to the rich and the politically favored who can afford private security. That describes a privilege. It does not describe a constitutional right.
If we have learned anything at all from the tragedy of global authoritarianism, it is that a weak, defenseless, and compliant public is a necessary first ingredient. The left wants to take your right to self-defense as part of a larger agenda to bend you to their political will. Do not let them.
Rachel Bovard is The Federalist's senior tech columnist and the senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute.