This article is authored by Mitch Nemeth
Facebook and Twitter’s measures to reduce the visibility of a New York Post story [a must read] about Hunter Biden backfired, as these efforts “didn’t prevent the article from becoming the top story about the election,” according to Axios. This does not lessen the troublesome actions taken by the platforms to curb the spread of a potentially devastating story for the Biden family. It does, however, demonstrate that “even swift, aggressive content suppression may not be swift or aggressive enough to keep down a story…as this one.”
Both social media networks have come under fire for alleged “censorship” of conservative-leaning content. Of course, the First Amendment’s protections of “Freedom of Speech” do not apply to most private corporations; however, these platforms are given an element of immunity for content moderation under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This government-granted immunity for certain moderation has been a political hot-button issue for some time.
Stories like the Hunter Biden New York Post story are undoubtedly in the public interest, as were the thousands of articles about the now-debunked Steele Dossier and Russian “collusion.” What differentiates this story from other political news stories is the response by social media networks.
Twitter took extreme action in which it disabled the sharing of the New York Post article, while suspending accounts of high-profile individuals who shared it. Facebook, on the other hand, reduced the reach of the story and made the sharing of this Post article eligible to be fact-checked. As major social networks, these platforms have been compared to the “public square” of days past. Thus, their impact on what is and what is not a news story is extremely important.
When a major platform takes steps to silence dissemination of a story based on unevenly enforced policies and on dubious theories of “Russia disinformation,” that platform is acting as a distributor of content.
A.W. Tozer, Of God and Men
“If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation, it must be by other means than any now being used. If the Church in the second half of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the first half, there must appear a new type of preacher. The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. All these have been tried and found wanting. Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne. When he comes (and I pray God there will be not one but many), he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce and protest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and opposition of a large segment of Christendom. Such a man is likely to be lean, rugged, blunt-spoken and a little bit angry with the world. He will love Christ and the souls of men to the point of willingness to die for the glory of the One and the salvation of the other. But he will fear nothing that breathes with mortal breath.”
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