Media Decides Censorship Is Bad Now That It Hits The Left
Pro-Palestinian voices shouldn’t be censored — and neither should other disfavored voices
The Twitter Files journalists, Republican members of Congress, and conservative activists have been persecuting misinformation and disinformation researchers, say the mainstream news media. They have been falsely accusing people like Renée Diresta of the Stanford Internet Observatory and Kate Starbird of the University of Washington of censorship, the New York Times, New Yorker, Washington Post, PBS, NPR, The Guardian, Daily Beast, Tech Crunch, and many other publications have argued. Diresta and Starbird, those outlets claim, were merely helping social media platforms detect dangerous forms of misinformation and disinformation, which could lead to real-world harm.
What’s more, say the news media, the whole idea that there is “government censorship” is a conspiracy theory. All that’s happening is content moderation to protect users, the online conversation, and democracy.
But now, the same publications that have dismissed and denied the reality of government-funded, government-demanded, and government-coerced censorship are raising the alarm about widespread censorship of progressive voices on social media platforms.
“Since the bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas escalated into war this month, Palestinian-focused creators have increasingly been using “algospeak” — a collection of phrases, special spellings, and code words — to prevent their posts from being removed or suppressed by social media companies,” lamented Naomi Nix with Taylor Lorenz and Will Oremus of The Washington Post. “Their rhetoric has revived years-long scrutiny over how tech companies like Meta, YouTube, and TikTok police their platforms during moments of heightened violence between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Funny — there wasn’t “years-long scrutiny” by the Washington Post when conservatives and other disfavored voices were being censored.