by Greg Piper
When the Supreme Court reversed a preliminary injunction against several federal agencies and officials for “coerc[ing] or significantly encourag[ing] a platform’s content-moderation decisions,” the ideologically hybrid majority concluded that well-documented federal pressure to censor government-disfavored narratives was unlikely to recur.
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, scolded his colleagues for their perceived credulity. The high court just provided “an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think,” he wrote.
The Biden administration, which a top Democratic senator said resumed communications with tech platforms “roughly around the same time” of oral argument at SCOTUS, may be implementing that model – and it has company in the European Union and Canada.
The White House recently appointed a censorship advocate to the office known for repeatedly giving marching orders to social media platforms on content the White House dislikes, then browbeating them for resisting or not moving fast enough and not giving President Biden preferential treatment.
Andy Volosky said he joined the White House on July 8, leaving progressive campaign consulting firm Middle Seat, which as of Tuesday still listed him as “Senior Social & Texting Strategist”.
But he didn’t specify his White House position and deleted his LinkedIn profile – still linked from his personal website – after Fox News said it listed Volosky as deputy director in the Office of Digital Strategy. The report noted Volosky’s essay-length enthusiasm for then-President Trump’s blacklisting from major social media platforms in January 2021.
[TWEET SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN DELETED]
Volosky’s views resemble those of Rob “Are you guys f***ing serious?” Flaherty, who led the office during the White House ramp-up of censorship pressure on platforms that was exposed by leaks, litigation and congressional subpoenas. Flaherty left last summer to become deputy director for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Republican presidential nominee Trump had dropped the ball by not making “free speech a central issue” in the campaign and now must force President Biden to “defend his overwhelmingly anti-free speech record.”
Last week EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton threatened to fine X and “require significant changes” to the Elon Musk-owned platform for repurposing its verified-user system to “deceive users” and “infri[n]ge” the Digital Services Act.
Musk responded by accusing the EU of offering X an “illegal secret deal” – no fines if it starts surreptitiously censoring users – which he said X declined but other platforms accepted. Breton said the EU did nothing more than “offer commitments to settle a case,” and wasn’t fazed by Musk’s threat to expose the alleged deal in court.
Canada’s Justin Trudeau administration plans to spend $201 million Canadian over five years to establish and operate a “Digital Safety Commission, Ombudsperson and Office” with 330 full-time employees to enforce the proposed Online Harms Act. Anti-censorship group Reclaim the Net flagged the cost estimate last week.
Famed psychologist Jordan Peterson and Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood have warned the bill (C-63) would criminalize wrongthink. Introduced in February, the bill only had its second reading in the House of Commons a month ago, where Attorney General Arif Virani said it “adapted the best parts” of similar laws in the U.K., Australia, Germany, France and the EU.
New federal employee Volosky worked for a social media marketing firm as a research and insights analyst when platforms banned or indefinitely suspended Trump for “his encouragement of an attempted armed insurrection” at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Volosky called it.
His Jan. 12, 2021, essay praised those actions as well as decisions by Google and Apple to “limit” free speech-friendly Parler and Gab in their app stores and Amazon for removing Parler “from its servers, and therefore the internet,” calling these “welcome steps” – and insufficient.
“What took them so long?” Volosky asked rhetorically while questioning whether platforms were “committed to this new path forward,” noting that Twitter didn’t touch the accounts of other governments and world leaders who use it for “propaganda as cover for autocracy.”
While he acknowledged the “genuine concern” of broader censorship due to the opacity of how platforms treat “abstractions” and “hyperbole” versus specific threats, “[i]t’s clearer than ever that social platforms need to moderate the extremist content … have the means and knowledge to do so” and must take “even stronger measures … in the very near future,” Volosky wrote.
With Democrats controlling Congress and the White House “for the first time in a decade” and their recent history of advocating “drastic steps” to rein in Big Tech, “this is initially scary” for his field, Volosky said. But if regulation makes people “feel more comfortable sharing their lives on social media,” social professionals will have better jobs.
Volosky did not respond to Just the News questions directed to his X account, which he last updated with his “new gig” July 8, nor did the White House Office respond to an email.
Before EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager fleshed out Breton’s vague post Friday morning in a formal letter to X, it was not clear what had provoked the internal market commissioner beyond nearly two years of recurring snippy back-and-forth with Musk.
Politico days earlier filed a likely embarrassing report for the EU about Musk’s SpaceX rescuing Europe’s satellites from the unreliable, heavily subsidized EU space program, to which Breton responded with pleas for protectionism and more subsidies.
“Back in the day, #BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information,” Breton, a former telecom executive long accused of conflicts of interest, wrote on X, referring to the badge Twitter unilaterally awarded to certain high-profile users before Musk’s purchase.
Some examples of the bluecheck guaranteed trustworthy information: https://t.co/YXVROZvcqj pic.twitter.com/qK0ySb7a1E
— Jonatan Pallesen (@jonatanpallesen) July 12, 2024
X now gives the badge to paid subscribers, which made it a target of misinformation police including the Center for Countering Hate, which advised Biden administration counterterrorism officials and which X unsuccessfully sued for “misleading research” that drove away advertisers.
While X can defend itself, the EU’s “preliminary” view is the badge’s revised purpose violates the DSA, Breton said. The law, which only took full effect in February, aims to “prevent illegal and harmful activities online and the spread of disinformation.”
Musk and other X users responded by mocking Breton. Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenberger called him a “totalitarian menace,” and venture capitalist Mike Solana called Breton “another european nazi who wants censorship.” An account that tracks X-related news noted that its rival Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has a similar paid badge.
Vestager’s letter said the repurposed verification badge does “not correspond to industry practice,” X lacks “required transparency on advertising” and the company does not “provide access to its public data to researchers” as the DSA requires.
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Greg Piper is a reporter for Just the News.
