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evan greer
Fight Over Trump Facebook Ban Called 'Huge Distraction' From Deeper Issues With Big Tech
By obsessing about the former president's online status, warns one digital rights advocate, "we are utterly missing the point."
Jan 26, 2023
Fight for the Future director Evan Greer argued Wednesday that the battle over whether former President Donald Trump should be banned from major social media platforms like Facebook is "a huge distraction" from broader Big Tech conversations that are urgently needed.
"Discussions about online content moderation and what policies are needed to ensure human rights, free expression, and safety are some of the most important and consequential societal debates in human history," Greer said in a statement. "When we center these debates about specific moderation decisions, especially ones involving high-profile, wealthy, politically powerful individuals like Donald Trump, we are utterly missing the point."
Greer's comments came as free speech advocates and Trump critics faced off over Meta's decision to allow the twice-impeached former president back on Facebook and Instagram. Trump, who is now seeking the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination, was suspended from both platforms—and others—after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol attack on January 6, 2021.
"We need to... instead focus on putting in place transformative policies based in human rights, and regulations that strike at the root of Big Tech giants' harm."
Meta global affairs president explained Wednesday that his accounts will be reinstated in the coming weeks "with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses." The move was blasted by groups including Common Cause, Free Press, Media Matters for America, and the NAACP, while others—including some Trump adversaries—agreed with the ACLU that "this is the right call. Like it or not, President Trump is one of the country's leading political figures and the public has a strong interest in hearing his speech."
Greer, meanwhile, echoed some of the warnings from Big Tech experts two years ago, when tech giants began banning Trump—a serial liar who ultimately launched his own platform called Truth Social, which strongly resembles Twitter.
\u201cEvan is right as usual. Please read\u201d— Javier Pallero (@Javier Pallero) 1674695288
The digital rights advocate pointed out that Trump "doesn't need social media to spread his hateful ideas. He has access to the mainstream press, who religiously cover his every move. And he can afford to hire public relations firms, pay for advertising, and leverage his notoriety and influence to gain attention, something he has shown himself to be uniquely good at."
"The Donald Trumps of the world are not the people most impacted by deplatforming, censorship, and overreaching moderation," Greer stressed. "It is the most marginalized who are the most censored online. Arab and Muslim folks living outside the U.S. routinely have their posts erroneously censored and their accounts unjustly banned by hamfisted 'anti-terrorism' filters used by most of the largest platforms."
"LGBTQ content creators, sex workers, and sexual health educators face constant deplatforming, debanking, and demonetization," she continued. "Abortion rights organizations consistently encounter obstacles placing online ads, and have seen an uptick in unjust account suspensions and post removals in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade."
According to Greer:
By allowing the former president to remain the center of attention in world-changing debates about content regulation, free speech, and the harms of Big Tech, we're helping him accomplish his vile goals of silencing and oppressing the most vulnerable. We need to move past circular discussions over specific moderation decisions impacting high-profile elites, and instead focus on putting in place transformative policies based in human rights, and regulations that strike at the root of Big Tech giants' harm. Passing a privacy law would do way more to slow the viral spread of hateful content and disinformation than keeping Trump off of any specific platform. Enacting antitrust reforms would do far more to protect our democracy from Trump and his ilk than banning any one account.
Let's refuse to let Trump derail the conversations we need to have. Let's keep fighting for policies that lead not just to the type of internet we want to have, but the type of world we want to live in: a world where everyone has a voice, and decisions that impact our lives are made transparently and democratically, rather than in closed-door corporate meetings.
However, even modest legislation to rein in Big Tech seems unlikely in the second half of President Joe Biden's first term, with the U.S. House of Representatives now narrowly held by Republicans and after two years of Democrats controlling Congress but failing to advance relevant bills—which many critics largely blame on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
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'Hands Off,' Varoufakis Tells Zuckerberg After Facebook Steals 'Meta' Name From Anti-Capitalist Think Tank
"You, and your minions, wouldn't recognize civilization even if it hit you with a bargepole," said the former Greek finance minister, slamming Facebook's CEO for the social media giant's new name.
Oct 29, 2021
As Facebook faces a firestorm for changing its corporate name to Meta amid heightened scrutiny over how the tech titan harms humanity, Greek economist and Progressive International co-founder Yanis Varoufakis on Friday called out the company for stealing the moniker of a global anti-capitalist think tank.
Varoufakis, in a tweet, took aim at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who announced the new name at a conference Thursday, as the social media company contends with widespread criticism of its practices thanks to revelations from former-employees-turned-whistleblowers.
"Hands off our meta, Our Center for Postcapitalist Civilization, Mr. Zuckerberg," tweeted the former Greek finance minister, who is on the think tank's advisory board. "You, and your minions, wouldn't recognize civilization even if it hit you with a bargepole."
\u201cHands off our m\u03adta, our Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation https://t.co/t9aIR0ahSC, Mr Zuckerberg. You, and your minions wouldn't recognise civilisation even if it hit you with a bargepole\u201d— Yanis Varoufakis (@Yanis Varoufakis) 1635458242
The mission page of meta's website explains that "we are already in the early stages of an era that can only be described by that which it succeeds: we live in postcapitalist times. They may turn out dystopic, utopic, or anything in between."
"Through art and research, argument, and poetry," the site says, "meta (the abbreviation of our Our Center for Postcapitalist Civilization) works to break with a dystopic present to imagine the world anew--to grasp our present historical moment so as to help radical progressive movements find a path from the emergent dismal postcapitalism to one worth fighting, and living, for."
Along with Varoufakis, other advisory board members include scholar Noam Chomsky, musician Brian Eno, filmmaker Ken Loach, economist James K. Galbraith, and philosopher Slavoj Zizek.
In addition to the social network Facebook, Meta also owns the photo- and video-sharing platform Instagram as well as the messaging application WhatsApp.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, while Zuckerberg celebrated the new corporate name for the company, tech ethicists and branding professionals warned the world not to be "fooled" by the move.
"It's tempting to view Facebook's rebranding as nothing more than a cynical attempt by the company to distance itself from endless scandals and the real-world harm caused by its surveillance capitalist business model. But it's actually much more sinister than that," said Evan Greer, director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, in a statement Friday.
"With this announcement Mark Zuckerberg revealed his end game: He's making a play to control the future of the Internet," she asserted, accusing the CEO of "co-opting the terminology of decentralization and attempting to solidify his stranglehold on the future of human attention and interaction."
\u201cI took a dive into the "Metaverse" and went on the BBC to talk about Facebook's rebranding and how we need to fight tooth and nail to ensure that the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world don't define and control the next generation of the Internet.\u201d— Evan Greer is on Mastodon (@Evan Greer is on Mastodon) 1635508727
Emphasizing the the importance of recognizing that "the Internet is changing," Greer argued that "we need to fight tooth and nail to ensure that the policies governing this next generation of the Internet are carefully crafted to protect vulnerable communities, free expression, and human rights--and that they don't undermine the potential of truly decentralized technologies, which could help finally end the era of Big Tech surveillance capitalism."
"We are at a crossroads," she said. "It's time to decide what we want the future of the Internet to look like. And then it's time to fight for that vision. Before it's too late."
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Throwing Support Behind Apple, National Protests Declare 'Don't Break Our Phones'
Rallies to be held at Apple stores nationwide in support of the company's defense of privacy
Feb 23, 2016
Rallies will take place at Apple stores nationwide at 5:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday to support the company in its staunch defense of privacy rights. The tech giant is currently embroiled in a civil liberties battle with the U.S. government, which has asked it to create a "master key" that would allow it to break into any iPhone.
| #DontBreakOurPhones Tweets |
As Common Dreams previously reported, Apple has refused to create such a key and characterized the request as "a dangerous precedent."
Support for Apple has continued to grow as new reports on Tuesday revealed that the Department of Justice is interested in breaking into multiple iPhones, and not just the one initially cited by the FBI.
The protests have been organized by Fight for the Future, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support freedom of expression on the internet, in cooperation with other civil liberties groups.
Rallies are planned in nearly 50 stores around the country. The largest rallies are planned in San Francisco, New York City, and Washington, D.C., the group tweeted.
"People are rallying at Apple stores because what the FBI is demanding here will make all of us less safe, not more safe," Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, said in a press release. "Their unconstitutional attack on our digital security could put millions of people in danger, so we're giving those people a way to get their voices heard."
\u201c#DontBreakOurPhones rallies in nearly 50 cities today to oppose FBI attack on our safety. https://t.co/OhcBJwq17C RT\u201d— @team@fightforthefuture.org on Mastodon (@@team@fightforthefuture.org on Mastodon) 1456247732
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