Cato Institute Libertarian Ideologue Appointed to Facebook Censorship Committee
Richard Moorhead
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A Vice President of the libertarian advocacy CATO Institute has been selected to fill a spot on Facebook’s “Oversight Board,” a new entity that will act as a de facto Supreme Court for the banning of content.
John Samples is a longtime employee of the corporate libertarian group, and has written extensively against proposals to regulate the prolific censorship of social media companies such as Facebook. He’s written articles titled “Why the Government Should Not Regulate Content Moderation of Social Media.”
Inquiry into the makeup of the censorship court reveal that it’s stacked with neoliberal and mainstream media operatives, who doubtlessly will push for the social media megacorporation to go even further and penalizing and silencing conservative and right-wing content from the platform. Curiously, it appears as if Samples is the only nominal figure with any connection to the political right selected to serve on the kangaroo court, raising serious questions about Facebook’s willingness to tolerate pro-free speech perspectives on the board.
https://twitter.com/ssharmaTX/status/1258135852456333312
Staunch liberals tasked with staffing the censorship court include Afia Asantewaa Asare-Kyei, a Swedish parliamentarian associated with George Soros’ “Open Society’ influence group, and Evelyn Aswad, a former State Department staffer hired by Hillary Clinton. The latter has tweeted openly about United Nations efforts to penalize what it sees as “hate speech” on social media.
Concerned about how to tackle online hate speech while respecting #FreedomofExpression? ICYMI last week: the United Nations top free expression expert @davidakaye released his annual #UNGA report, which provides a principled framework to achieve this goal. #bizhumanrights #RBC https://t.co/fmAmHoXpgn
— Evelyn Mary Aswad (@EvelynAswad) October 28, 2019
If anything, it looks like the liberals tasked with staffing Facebook’s censorship court will be even more punitive towards what they arbitrarily define as hate speech. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has expressed misgivings about some of the most egregious demands censorship advocates have called for the company to implement.
The ‘Oversight Board’ censorship court will have final authority over Facebook content moderation practices, handing the liberal ideologues and corporate libertarian even greater power than Zuckerberg himself.
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