Freedom of Speech, Not Reach
A business strategy to maintain corporate media monopolies while avoiding constitutional first amendment breaches
In a segment of the CNBC program “Squawk on the Street” titled “X Corp. now a much healthier and safer platform than a year ago, says Linda Yaccarino” (link here), this cable channel “business” division of NBC and its parent media company Comcast provided a forum for Ms. Yaccarino (newly appointed “X” CEO and formerly Chairman of Global Advertising & Partnerships at NBC/Universal Media) to discuss “Brand Safety”.
To provide further context, the new CEO also serves as the Chairman of the WEF’s Taskforce on Future of Work and sits on the WEF’s Media, Entertainment and Culture Industry Governors Steering Committee.
Since acquisitions, we have built brand safety and content moderation tools that have never existed before at this company. And we’ve introduced a new policy, to your specific point, about hate speech, called Freedom of Speech, not Reach.
So if you’re going to post something that’s illegal or against the law, you’re gone, zero tolerance. But more importantly, if you are going to post something that is lawful, but it’s awful, you get labeled.
You get labeled, you get de-amplified, which means it cannot be shared, and it is certainly demonetized. – Linda Yaccarino
While the key issue presented and defended is brand safety, there are two main subtexts. The first is revealed in the marketing (ergo propaganda) catchphrase “Freedom of speech, not reach” – “for those who post things that are judged” (How? By whom?) “as lawful, but awful, you get labeled, you get de-amplified, it cannot be shared, and it is demonetized”.
The second is more subtle, and revolves around suppressing alternative media voices and content.
This is clearly a strategy specifically designed to evade US Constitutional Bill of Rights First Amendment restrictions- the central topic of the lawsuit “Missouri vs Biden” which is yet again in the news (below).
However, it is also a strategy which acts to sustain the monopolistic protections and practices which corporate “mainstream” media is desperate to defend as citizens throughout the world are turning to “alternative” media sources for news, opinions, and other information which does not align with governmentally “approved” narratives (ergo government propaganda).
Some legal experts (interviewed on background) assert that such “do not amplify” strategies that throttle various messages and content at the “suggestion” of the government are equivalent to viewpoint discrimination, which violates the free speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of petition clauses of the first amendment.
USA Today’s coverage of recent events in Missouri vs. Biden was posted at 9:00 PM EST yesterday (Friday Sept 08, 2023):
Biden administration coerced social media giants into possible free speech violations: court
The White House, health officials and the FBI may have violated the First Amendment rights of people posting about COVID-19 and elections on social media by pressuring technology companies to suppress or remove the posts, a federal appeals court ruled late Friday.
The decision from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals partly upheld an order from a Louisiana federal judge that blocked many federal agencies from having contact with companies like Facebook, YouTube and X, formerly Twitter, about content moderation.
But the 75-page opinion from three-judge panel also significantly narrowed the scope of the order that was a major victory for conservatives.
~~~~~~~
The lawsuit accused administration officials of coercing platforms into taking down controversial content including election fraud, the FBI’s handling of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the COVID pandemic.
The 5th Circuit panel found that the White House coerced the platforms through “intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences” and commandeered the decision-making processes of social media companies, particularly in handling pandemic-related and 2020 election posts.
“It is true that the officials have an interest in engaging with social media companies, including on issues such as misinformation and election interference. But the government is not permitted to advance these interests to the extent that it engages in viewpoint suppression,” the judges wrote.
The appeals court pared down U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty’s July 4 ruling, saying it was “overbroad.” Doughty said the lawsuit may involve “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”
In it’s coverage, The New York Times’ “misinformation” beat reporter Steven Lee Myers spins a predictably more pro-government and anti-Republican narrative, noting that both Biden and Trump administrations engaged in what is increasingly recognized as constitutionally prohibited behavior:
The debate over how far companies can go to limit content online — known as moderation — has become increasingly vehement and polarizing. On one side, government officials have argued that they have a duty to protect public health and national security from false or misleading information.
Republicans and others, however, have accused the social media giants of colluding with government officials in violation of First Amendment protections of free speech.
They have focused their anger at the Biden administration even though previous administrations regularly had contacts with social media companies and some of the instances cited in the lawsuit occurred during the Trump administration.
Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, noted recently that Mr. Trump’s White House had asked the company in 2019 to remove a tweet in which the model Chrissy Teigen called the president several expletives. (The company did not, after what Mr. Roth called Kafkaesque internal deliberations.)
What is really going on here?
The weapon, the sword of Damocles which the US Government uses to threaten the social media giants and get them to comply with the propaganda and censorship demands of the administrative state is known by the legal statute name 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1).
Informally known as Section 230 (it was originally part of the Congressionally approved Communications Decency Act), it was ostensibly passed to protect Americans’ freedom of expression online by protecting the intermediaries we all rely on. It states:
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” – (47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1)).
What this really does is provide broad indemnification (protection against lawsuits) for social media companies and their platforms in the situation where a user posts illegal, defamatory or otherwise malicious content which they might otherwise be held legally liable for because they hosted and transmitted this content.
Such protection is NOT extended to more traditional corporate media outlets, which (in the USA) rely on judicial precedent (for example Sullivan vs New York Times) for protection against defamation lawsuits filed against their organizations and/or employees (ergo, “reporters”).
Pity the poor social media company CEO. As if the business model and constant revenue challenges were not bad enough. Section 230 is a Congressionally passed law which is interpreted and applied by the Administrative State bureaucracy; at any time it could be rescinded, revised, or reinterpreted.
And if this protection is removed, then the entire “social media” business model currently practiced by “X”, Facebook, GETTR, GAB, Truth Social, Substack, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, TikTok and so many others would immediately become untenable due to legal liability issues.
In other words, it is quite easy for congresspersons, Senators, officials and bureaucrats to intimidate social media companies to do the bidding of the government. “Nice business you have there, it would be a shame if we had to revoke Section 230”. Make sense now? Nice government control weapon, that Section 230.
Enter alternative media and it’s independent, non-governmentally approved information and narratives. Entering from stage left, right, and center, by the way. The social media companies have become reluctant hosts to alternative media sources.
In a sense, alternative media outlets and voices leverage (or parasitize, depending on your POV) the large social media providers to basically advertise their content. Content which leads to “clicks”, “likes”, “follows” and various off ramps from the host social media platform onto the alternative media platform, which in turn lead to revenue which is outside the reach or ability of the social media platform to tax or otherwise extract revenue from.
The larger truth is that established corporate media also seeks to leverage social media for both paid and unpaid advertising. Everyone wants to extract money and value from the host platform and its installed user base.
And in some cases (for example Substack), one sees a smaller social media platform functionally parasitizing larger ones (such as “X”) in a very decentralized manner driven by users (or authors, in the case of Substack).
Which apparently was seen as an intolerable loss of revenue by “X” leadership, resulting in algorithmic “throttling” of the “reach” (ability to be viewed by other users) of Substack-related content and links posted on “X”.
Or maybe the underlying issue is that Substack content is outside of the reach of “X” leadership because it is accessed via an off-ramp from “X”. Another alternative point of view is that people subscribe to “X” in large part because that has been the most efficient way to access breaking news and alternative points of view.
If that is blocked, then why bother?
Here comes the “monopoly” part of this analysis of the current media ecosystem. The “traditional” business model pursued by corporate media and the frenemy oligopolies that have come to control virtually all large information outlets has been one in which they have been allowed to completely control the Overton Window – the window of allowed discourse and range of politically acceptable policies made available to the mainstream population at a given time.
One set of consequences of the consolidation of corporate media has been a creeping investigational laziness and comfort with the status quo.
In an information ecosystem where sincere investigational (independent reporting) challenge is rare, the simplest and most lucrative path forward for these media oligopolies is to push out information which is consistent with governmental and corporate needs and desires, as governments, corporations, and their public-private partnerships have become the main customers of the media oligopolies.
Functionally, a self-licking ice cream cone. The end consumer of media product wants it fast and cheap, if not free, and so is no longer the main customer – if this was ever the case. The current primary customers of corporate media see the end consumers more as objects to be manipulated, propagandized and marketed to.
Social media has also largely adopted and consolidated this same business model through mechanisms such as the WEF promoted GARM agreement (Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a cross-industry initiative founded by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA)), the BBC-led Trusted News Initiative, and Google AdSense.
The “Trusted News Initiative” has grown to become the umbrella organization which unites Social Media and Corporate Media under a monopolistic trade organization which seeks to defend the global corporate media oligopoly against the intrusion of alternative media.
Google and its AdSense operation has become the tool used to systematically deny advertising dollars to alternative media which is determined to have transgressed by circulating content which Google determines to go against the approved narrative (or interests of the administrative state).
To illustrate this policy in action, see for example “Google will ban ads from running on stories spreading debunked coronavirus conspiracy theories“.
The traditional subscriber and advertising-based business model of Corporate or “Mainstream” media has been failing for quite a while now, resulting in hollowing out of the depth and complexity of staffing and the resulting work product.
Thus, a tidal wave of failure to fulfill the traditional competitive “investigational news” role which has served as a historic brake on government and corporate corruption and malfeasance has occurred.
Into the breach has stepped a variety of largely volunteer “minutemen” journalists which fuel alternative media information streams. And of those, the most threatening of all is Joe Rogan with his 11 million subscriber base, which dwarfs the reach of most Corporate or “Mainstream” media.
But Rogan is not the only one. For instance, the non-profit investigational firm Judicial Watch has a subscriber and distribution base of over 15 million, and is almost entirely supported by a large number of small donor conservatives.
And arising from the ashes of formerly semi-independent corporate media are increasingly edgy disaffected journalists and authors.
Examples of these include Matt Taibbi (formerly the heir apparent to Rolling Stone’s Hunter S Thompson), Alex Berenson (formerly of the NY Times), Glenn Greenwald (founder with Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras of The Intercept), Bari Weiss, Naomi Wolfe, all the way down to local broadcast anchors who just could not tolerate the centralized propaganda edits of their corporate overseers (like my friend Allison Morrow) who have joined or launched their own alternative media platforms.
And these alternative media sources now increasingly fill the niche for true investigative journalism which has been abandoned by corporate media.
For example, this particular substack (Who is Robert Malone) frequently meets or exceeds the average daily viewership of CNN.
And while the subscription model is failing for most of corporate media, paid subscriptions are sustaining these new entrants who often produce quality video, audio and written content which targets both general and specific niche audiences.
This is taken from a long document, read the rest here substack.com
Bold emphasis added
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.