TGIF: Leave TikTok Alone

This is America, last I checked. Surely, the government would not force the sale of a social-media company or ban its app from the Google and Apple stores. Would it?

Well, yes, it would,  could (perhaps), and might. A bill in Congress, backed by the government's nominal chief executive, could become law. The House of Representatives passed it last week by an overwhelming bipartisan majority -- despite valiant efforts by Rep. Thomas Massie,  R-KY, plus a few others -- and it is now before the Senate.

That bill would establish fuzzy criteria defining a "foreign adversary's" alleged influence through a social media platform. It is aimed, for now, at requiring TikTok, used by 170 million mostly younger Americans, to be sold to a government-approved American buyer within a specified period. If not sold, Americans would be forbidden to get the app. I guess the app would have to be disabled for those who have it already.

In other words, TikTok would be banned from America -- you know, just as China's communist government bans or interferes with social media over there. Knowing how the government works, we must presume that the bill's criteria will be applied to other cases later. It certainly would exist as a standing threat to the uncooperative.

The complaint against TikTok is that it's a subsidiary of ByteDance, a widely owned company subject to Chinese government influence or control, although this is disputed by TikTok's CEO, Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean businessman with substantial roots in -- the United States. But let's assume the worst and see where that leads. After all, the Chinese government is no respecter of individual rights. If the U.S. government is eager to interfere with social media, why not the Chinese government?

TikTok worriers say that China could harvest data on Americans while feeding them self-serving democracy-subverting messages. It has reportedly been caught suppressing unflattering information. Not good, but of course, the U.S. government has done the same thing; a lawsuit about this, Murthy v. Missouri, is now before the Supreme Court. As many critics of the bill have pointed out, the Chinese don't need TikTok to acquire information that users readily give up to other platforms. It's already on the market. Moreover, nobody should expect the news from any one online source to be complete; as one grows, one should learn to consult a variety of sources for a fuller picture.

Matthew Petti of Reason is right: "Competition is the strongest force keeping the internet free. Whenever users find a topic banned on TikTok, they can escape to Twitter or Instagram to discuss the censored content. And when Twitter or Instagram enforce politically motivated censorship on a different topic, users can continue that discussion on TikTok."

Changing ownership or banishing TikTok would create a false sense of security. The problem of myopia would remain.

Moreover, as Matt Taibbi alerts us, the bill would give the executive branch "sweeping powers." He writes: "As written, any 'website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application' that is 'determined by the President to present a significant threat to the National Security of the United States' is covered.'"

Taibbi continues: "A 'foreign adversary controlled application,' in other words, can be any company founded or run by someone living at the wrong foreign address, or containing a small minority ownership stake. Or it can be any company run by someone 'subject to the direction' of either of those entities. Or, it’s anything the president says it is. Vague enough?"

By this time, shouldn't we expect the worst from letting legislators write the rules?

But those are not the only reasons for concern. According to Glenn Greenwald, the bill had been floating around for a few years but had not garnered enough support to get through Congress. That changed recently, according to Greenwald, citing articles in the Wall Street Journal, Economist, and Bari Weiss's Free Press. Why? As Greenwald documents, anxiety about TikTok took a quantum leap beginning on Oct. 7, 2023, the day Hamas killed and kidnapped hundreds of Israeli civilians and Israel began retaliating against the people of the Gaza Strip.

What has this got to do with TikTok? you ask. Good question. Israel's defenders in the United States, such as Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, are upset that TikTok's young users are being exposed to what he calls anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic disinformation. "It's Al Jazeera on steroids," Greenblatt said on MSNBC. During a leaked phone call, he complained, "We have a TikTok problem," by which he means a generational problem. Younger people -- including younger Jewish people -- are appalled at what Israel's military is doing in Gaza. (To complicate things, it looks like TikTok and Instagram have suppressed pro-Palestinian information.)

Would an American-owned TikTok be easier to control? Experience says yes. Have a look at the Twitter Files, which document how American officials, Chinese-style, pressured social media to censor or suppress dissenting views on important matters such as the COVID-19 response and the 2020 election. A federal judge likened the government's efforts to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Do we want to become more like China?

A final word. Defenders of free speech should not argue that ill-intentioned disinformation and well-intentioned misinformation from any source can cause no harm, broadly defined. Of course, it can. The proper answer to this legitimate concern is that government-produced "safetyism," placing safety above every other value including freedom, will do more harm than good.

TGIF: Shame on Government for Censoring Us

Alas, federal District Judge Terry A. Doughty's preliminary injunction against government censorship of us on social media has been put on hold.

So rules three members of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. But this stay of the injunction in State of Missouri et al. v. Joseph R. Biden Jr. et al. is temporary. NBC News reported a couple of weeks ago that "a different panel drawn from the [same appellate] court, which has 17 active members, will hear arguments on a longer stay." The matter could be resolved quickly though because the three judges "called for arguments in the case to be scheduled on an expedited basis."

So for now, however, we're back where we started. Judge Doughty had turned down the government's first request that the injunction be put on hold, writing,

Defendants argue that the injunction should be stayed because it might interfere with the Government’s ability to continue working with social-media companies to censor Americans’ core political speech on the basis of viewpoint. In other words, the Government seeks a stay of the injunction so that it can continue violating the First Amendment.

You gotta love this guy!

In light of the stay, let's look closely at Judge Doughty's reasons for forbidding federal agencies and personnel from indirectly censoring the public's constitutionally protected speech by pressuring social media to delete or suppress posts they dislike. He spelled out the grounds in great detail in his 155-page ruling.

Recall that the states of Missouri and Louisiana and several private individuals sued the Biden administration, claiming that it is doing what it may not do even indirectly, censoring constitutionally protected speech by putting all sorts of pressure on social-media companies. This was used to silence dissenters whether or not their posts contained true or false information. The posts and links were related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hunter Biden laptop, and other subjects. (For background, see my articles here and here.)

Under the First Amendment (and common-sense morality), of course, the government may not censor us directly. The Supreme Court has clearly said that the government also may not require private companies to do censoring for it. Any "request" from the government always carries the implicit threat of reprisal should the recipient of the request say no.

To begin with Doughty's conclusion:

The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition. Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power. All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech. American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country. Although this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the Court is only examining it in terms of Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth. [Emphasis added.]

The Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign. This court finds that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment free speech claim against the Defendants.

Note that he twice says the Plaintiffs are likely to succeed in their suit. That's one of the criteria for a preliminary injunction while a case is still in progress. Should the plaintiffs lose, his injunction would be null and void. But given the subject -- the First Amendment and free speech -- Doughty is pretty sure they are not going to lose. He also was persuaded by the plaintiffs that if he did not stop the government right now, "irreparable harm" would ensue.

Doughty opened his opinion with this:

This case is about the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The explosion of social-media platforms has resulted in unique free speech issues—this is especially true in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech. [Emphasis added.]

This is remarkable. Since Doughty thinks the plaintiffs are likely to prevail, he must also agree that the case "involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history."

If you wonder whether that's an exaggeration, peruse the judge's ruling. It details the offenses and justifies the application of his injunction to each of the named defendants. It's breathtaking.

 

TGIF: More Voices, Please

If the social media and other high-tech companies, whether under pressure from the state or not, were to lead people to believe that, starting today, only accurate information will get through their gatekeepers, would the public, especially the most gullible, really be better off?

How so? How would it do people any favors to have them think that everything they read or have access to through Google, Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, etc. is good solid information rather than disinformation or misinformation? (Question: when the establishment media "reported" day after day over four years that Vladimir Putin had interfered with the 2016 presidential election to put his puppet in power, was that misinformation or disinformation?)

Of course the gatekeepers couldn't guarantee any such thing. They're not omniscient, especially when you remember on whom they will be relying for "the truth": government agents and their officially approved scientific and other experts -- the very source of so much demonstrable misinformation and disinformation on a whole range of subjects. Do you want to hear only from Dr. Fauci on Covid? Or Michael Mann on climate? Etc. Etc. Etc. (For proof of the CDC's disingenuousness, see this video.)

We absolutely need a variety of voices and viewpoints if we -- individually and cooperatively -- are to make good decisions for ourselves and our families in a world of unfolding yet always imperfect knowledge. Free speech is not a luxury that sometimes we can't afford. It's a bloody necessity at all times!

Do we need Joe Rogan? I don't, but I'm only me and I refuse to speak for anyone else. I've seen only a few brief segments of his program, but from my impression of him, I'd say Justin Amash had it right on Twitter:

People trust @joerogan not because he’s always right, but because he’s transparent, curious, gracious, humble about knowledge, and willing to consider perspectives that challenge and reshape his own thinking.

Spotify and the other platforms of course should be free to associate with anyone they want. And others have a perfect right to dissociate with those platforms as they see fit. We're talking here not what anyone has a legal right to do but what anyone ought to do or not do. One thing we can say for sure is that the politicians and their spokespeople ought to butt out. If anyone does not have free-speech rights when it comes to these matters, it's the people who hold and speak for state power. It's established in case law that government officials may not indirectly censor via winks, nods, and veiled threats directed at private companies. (See Glenn Greenwald's video commentary.)

By the way, if you're watching Joe Rogan for medical or diet or any kind of specialized advice that you can unblinkingly accept and act on, I've got news for you: you have bigger problems than a free-wheeling internet.

A further-by-the-way: it is absurd that certain words are simply unspeakable under any circumstances, as though we lived when people believed they could cast spells on others. There is a world of difference between directly using a slur word (as the word using is usually meant) and discussing how other people have used it. Would it really be impossible for a college English department to have a class on the history of taboo words? Is this society going crazy? If you treat young people, including college students, like babies, they might never grow up. An effective immune system, including the psychological immune system, cannot develop robustness -- or antifragility -- if it never is stressed.

And that brings up an important related matter. If people are so stupid that we can't have Rogan and others freely doing what they want online, why are those same stupid people urged to vote every two, four, and six years? It was Frédéric Bastiat who wondered how people could be such idiots every day of the year except election day. To be consistent, those who would suppress speech should be honest and come out against representative democracy. At least their story would have some coherence -- but not entirely. Because we might have to wonder how they managed to get out of the Platonic shadowy cave the rest of us are stuck in. But never mind that.

Look at how the enemies of free speech want to have it both ways. If you point out that Fauci has said different things at different times, they will say, "Of course! What's wrong with that? Fauci learned new facts as time went on, changed his positions, and updated the public."

But there's more to the story than that. Imagine that at time t Fauci says that vaccines will keep you from getting Covid. Then at t' he says, "Correction. You can still get it, although not as bad as you would have if you were unvaccinated." What's left out of this account is that at t, other people -- credentialed people -- had offered reasons to question Fauci's claim. If the would-be censors had had their way, the doubters would have been silenced for trafficking in disinformation. No one would have heard that Fauci's t statement might have been misleading or incomplete. We would have had to wait until t' to learn from Fauci himself that his earlier claims were "inoperative."

That sort of thing would be dangerous anytime, but it's especially so in a pandemic, when new facts come to light daily and even hourly.

Can life in a sea of free and conflicting voices be confusing? Hell, yeah. But you know what's worse? One Official Voice. That's essentially what we had in the golden era of three boring television networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, and one really boring television network, PBS. Return to those days? No thank you.

Centuries ago the liberal advocates of religious freedom were also admonished that a society could not function with the divisive free exercise of religion, including religious speech. The censors were wrong. The public-health establishment's and legacy media's special pleading in all this is too palpable to need elaboration.

Better Off -- Really?

If the social media and other high-tech companies, pushed by the state, were to lead people to believe that, starting today, only accurate information will get the through their gatekeepers, would the public, especially the most gullible, really be better off?

TGIF: Targeted Advertising Violates No Liberty

Last week I modestly attempted to show that no injustice takes place when A sells B the opportunity to pitch its product to C. This is the principle behind print, television, and radio advertising, and it is no different in the era of social networks like Facebook. In principle, the commercial act I've described is similar to many other commercial acts. Someone has a megaphone and rents it to someone else, who then uses it to convey product messages to others. Where's the objection?

But this does not dispose of the matter because many people are bothered that the social networks collect information about their members, which advertisers may buy in order to tailor and target their merchandising campaigns for maximum effect. The thing that bothers critics seems, certainly a first glance, to make a lot of sense for all concerned. A car company quite sensibly would want to make its pitch to people who have already shown an interest in buying a car. It could waste a lot of money trying to sell cars without that information. Advertising is always iffy, so anything that increases the chances of success, however small they remain, may be worthwhile. On the other hand, people who want to buy a car could well appreciate that car dealers are seeking to direct commercial messages to them, and some (though not necessarily all) people not looking for a new car could well be glad to be free of such advertising, which they might regard as a nuisance.

The point is that when advertisers acquire information about potential customers and narrow the pool, they benefit others besides themselves. We need not start off suspicious of such a practice. One thing markets do best is produce information, and generally speaking, access to consumer information is a good. 

Of course wanting and acquiring market research is nothing new. What's new is the sophistication of the tools in the information age. However, it is easy to overestimate the efficacy of those tools. We too easily think that the ability to acquire information is equivalent to the power to manipulate. That is wrong.

Before the information age, gathering market data was a more crude operation. When Chevrolet advertised on TV's "Bonanza" decades ago, General Motors had at least a rough idea about who was watching the western each week. The networks did research--does anyone remember the Nielsen survey?--and that information was available to advertisers. There was no point in trying to sell Chevys to 6-10-year-old children. I suspect most people were not bothered by such research, although principled opponents of the market surely were.

But today's advanced online marketing research bothers many people because of how it is gathered. It's understandable. When we visit websites and or use social networks, we leave electronic trails unless we undertake efforts to avoid doing so. Everything we do online expresses our preferences to some degree, subject to recording; for a long time we've been on notice that this is the case.

We are also on notice that for a price such information may be made available to people who want to sell us things. We are free, though it may not be costless, to avoid leaving trails by using web browsers that protect privacy, such as DuckDuckGo or Startpage. Also, users may eschew social media if they find their privacy options inadequate or nonexistent. Granted, reading user agreements and navigating the privacy settings can be perplexing, but the market addresses that problem through online experts who often advise lay people on how to protect their privacy on the social networks. We live in a world of trade-offs, and we try to choose the mix of costs and benefits that best suits us as individuals.

Most people understand the trade-offs and are willing to give up some information in return for the convenience and fun of online activities. But others are upset to the point where they want the government to regulate or even stop the social networks and other platforms. Advocates of liberty would have to object to government interference beyond redress for fraud and breach of contract. As a general matter, making data from market research available is not only unobjectionable but ought to be welcome.

Let's not forget that placing an online ad before a group of people is no guarantee they will click on it, and clicking on it is no guarantee that they will buy the product. Consumers are in control. Why do critics of the information age insist on portraying us as puppets?

To sum up, research and targeted advertising is generally good in a variety of ways. Advertisers can waste less money. Entrepreneurs can refine their estimates of which consumer needs have been overlooked. And consumers can minimize their exposure to annoying and irrelevant ads. People wishing to opt out can find ways. 

One downside to the preoccupation with research-based online advertising is that the real threat to privacy--the government--gets too little attention. In the morality play, social networks and advertisers are bad and government regulators are good. But we've long known how little government at all levels respects our privacy. Information-age technology has aggravated that situation by orders of magnitude, as Edward Snowden showed us some years ago. Yet Congress keeps reauthorizing the executive branch's authority to spy on us (and people abroad) with impunity. Something's wrong when this is of less concern than Amazon's ability to tell me that it has what I was looking for last week.

What's the bigger threat: a company that buys information we've given up in order to sell us things, or the state, which ultimately seeks to control us?

TGIF: The Bias against Advertising

People who dislike markets harbor a special animosity toward advertising as cynically controlling. This is not new. In the mid-20th century John Kenneth Galbraith and other market opponents condemned advertising as business's way to manipulate people into buying things they had no real need for and actually didn't want. To hear them tell it, the consumer is not an agent but a puppet, with advertisers as the puppet masters.

This position was and is wrong--Galbraith and his colleagues, I suspect, did not think they were helpless buyers--and it was debunked by sensible people, including Israel Kirzner, the great economist of the Austrian school and student of Ludwig von Mises. After all, advertising is information about products, including products many people may be unaware of but would be happy to learn about. Sure, ads try to be attention-grabbing, but so what? People are busy, and information is all around. So the value of advertising is obvious.

This point is not undercut by the undoubted fact that manufacturers present their products in the best light possible. Part of growing up is acquiring a degree of skepticism about the claims made in advertisements. As long as government doesn't impede competition by blocking entry into markets and as long as consumers have recourse for actual fraud, consumers can be reasonably protected from false information. The value of advertising thus stands untouched.

The claim that ads can easily manipulate consumers is refuted by history and everyday events. If it were true, no business that advertised would fail. But businesses fail every day. The market antagonists who attacked advertising in the 1950s and '60s apparently missed the story of the Ford Edsel, a notorious example of a heavily advertised product from major company that flopped spectacularly.

Alas, we're usually wrong to assume that when a proposition is thoroughly debunked, it disappears and is never spoken of again. That would be nice, but in fact, advocates of freedom well know that hoary falsehoods must be refuted over and over for each new generation if not more often than that.

So the attack on advertising is still with us. Anyone who has seen the Netflix video "The Social Dilemma" will understand this. The program is an attack on all the social-media platforms for, among other things, cynically delivering helpless customers to businesses that want to sell them things. The program goes so far as to feature a retired Harvard Business School professor who said that Facebook et al., are simply "markets that trade human futures"! That sounds horrible, of course, but what she could have meant is anyone's guess. In a real futures market, people buy and sell options to engage in future transactions involving commodities at prices set in the present. The parties certainly do not buy people, and neither do advertisers on Twitter and the other platforms.

What do they do then? They pay the platform for the opportunity to place their product messages before potential buyers. Stated that way, the process sounds rather benign, and that's because it is.

It also should seem commonplace because it is. This is how print and broadcast media have long made money. Is a newspaper less of a news medium because it sells car dealers and funeral homes space in which they can pitch their products and services to readers? Are radio and television stations not really entertainment and news media because they sell time to businesses to make pitches to listeners and viewers? Is something wrong with commercial billboards? Are potential consumers merely helpless pawns of the advertisers? Of course not.

Broadcast advertising was an ingenious solution to a vexing free-rider problem. With old-style broadcast, a station or network could not charge consumers for its programs. The signal was transmitted, and anyone with a receiver could enjoy the programs. People were able to be free-riders, so as a business model, the drawbacks were substantial. (Entirely viewer-supported programming might work in some circumstances.) Luckily, some bright entrepreneur hit on the idea of selling advertising time to soap and soup companies. In return, the companies got the opportunity to pitch their wares to potential customers.

But notice that buying time did not guarantee that anyone would watch or listen to commercials. Many people instead broke for the kitchen or bathroom. And even if they stayed in their seats, that did not guarantee they would buy what was being offered. But they might, and advertisers were willing to pay for that chance.

Consumers are not puppets. They are human agents with preferences and interests. And they can take as active a stance toward advertising as they choose.

All of this applies to the social media. Even if advertisers have access to all the data that participants choose to give away through their online activities, it is no assurance either that they will click on ads or that they will buy the products even if they do click on ads. It's been pointed out that in 2017 only 0.9 percent of Facebook ads were clicked on. I'd like to know what percentage of clickers actually bought something. That hardly supports the claim that the social media are diabolical platforms for manipulating helpless people on behalf ruthless sellers.

So much for the hysterical insistence that Facebook et al. collect so much data on their participants that they can predict with great precision any individual's behavior and thus guarantee success to their advertisers.

This does not mean that the social media are beyond all criticism. One can be rightly irritated by their condescension toward participants, as when they suppress controversial links, and other objectionable features. But among their least objectionable features is they sell businesses the opportunity to pitch their products to us.