Silicon Valley’s Horny Billionaires and Censors Now Biggest Threat to Free Speech and the Search for Truth – RT Op-ed

If anyone still naively believes that Facebook is a force for good and not the vanguard of elite pacification of public life, then last week’s announcement that it to prohibit a prominent researcher from his platform should sound the alarm.

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The problem, according to Facebook, was a 2015 article (yes, six years ago!) By a University of Florida geneticist called Kevin Folta. His crime? He slammed two anti-pesticide campaigners for making misleading statements about the weedkiller glyphosate in an opinion piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The authors falsely claims the herbicide causes cancer and the Journal recognized the causal link between the two.

Folta simply pointed out both the fallacy of their claims about glyphosate and the insidious attempt on their part to legitimize their falsehoods by associating it with NEJM.

It should be noted that one of the authors, Charles Benbrook, had already been unmasked as having taken $ 100,000 organic food companies to conduct “studies” that would make their products attractive.

For highlighting the falsehoods of the opinion piece and pointing out that the NEJM had not editorially endorsed the claims regarding the health effects of glyphosate, Folta was accused of violating “community standards” of Glyphosate. Facebook. Facebook, the truthful general, has warned that his account could be suspended if he commits another offense.

There are three remarkable and disturbing things about Facebook’s behavior.

First, without the knowledge and credentials, he has the mind-boggling arrogance to intervene in a scientific dispute. This is very disturbing because it suggests that there are no limits to which its censorship will go. Threatening a leading scientist to de-platform speaks volumes about Facebook’s tenuous and promiscuous relationship with the truth.

Second, it suggests that the company is uncritically accepting reports of abuse from eco-activists who obviously have time to scour past posts motivated by their desire to hunt down Folta and other legitimate scientists to have them removed. the platform.

And third, if Facebook didn’t act on the information from its network of ecological informants, it is scrutinizing past posts to eliminate the truths it opposes, let alone the eco-warriors. That would be an even more worrying development, as it would turn Facebook into a political platform of censorship rather than what it claims to be – an open platform in which truth and contestation can thrive.

It’s time for people to sit down and smell the coffee. Social networks are a remarkably powerful tool. It is now anchored in our democratic process. It has become the public square. Letting him dominate and control by a tiny but powerful handful of oligarchs poses a real threat to the future.

Everything they do should be questioned and questioned. Their woolly hipster “community guidelines” are nothing more than a facade for arbitrary and biased censorship – a manifesto for distorting opinions that they and their fanatic aroused cheerleaders find offensive.

They pay lip service to want “people can talk openly about issues that concern them, even though some may disagree or find it objectionable. “And with the grace of autocratic dictators, they paternalistically warn that”in some cases, we allow public awareness content that would otherwise go against our community standards – if it is newsworthy and in the public interest. We do this only after weighing the value of the public interest against the risk of harm.“We should take our hats off and thank them for their magnanimity.

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George Orwell would have commended the editors of it for its open emptiness. Here, Facebook brazenly lays out how it will determine what the public interest is, who and what it can censor, and more frighteningly, what it deems harmful.

Arrogance is beyond comprehension. How a prominent scientist attempting to politely educate the public on a controversial scientific issue in 2015 violates these guidelines is truly unfathomable.

It is not Kevin Folta who poses a threat to the public interest. After all, in the realm of science, open contestation is the cornerstone of the advancement of knowledge. What threatens this future is not the debate and the call for disinformation, but the censoring arrogance of Facebook; his conviction that he is now the judge, the jury and the executioner, compelling even to eminent scientists, let alone you and me.

When they come looking for scientists, you can be sure no one is safe. It’s time to de-platform Facebook. It’s time to create a new public space in which adults can freely exchange ideas, challenge each other and openly fight for the truth.

It’s time to call out Facebook and its ersatz “community guidelines” that are designed to advance Facebook’s revenue – based on the hijacking of our personal data – rather than any commitment to the truth.

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