Look, if you want to cut to the chase: the lawyers working for Google and Meta know that the MAGA world is very, very stupid and very, very gullible, and it’s very, very easy to tell them something that they know will be interpreted as a “victory” while actually signaling something very, very different. You could just reread my analysis of Meta and Mark Zuckerberg’s silly misleading caving to Rep. Jim Jordan last year, because this is more of the same.

This time it’s Google doing the caving in a manner they absolutely know doesn’t actually admit to things that Jordan and the MAGAverse will insist it does actually admit. If anything, it’s actually admitting the reverse. Specifically, it sent a letter replying to some Jim Jordan subpoenas, which Jim Jordan is claiming as a victory for free speech because Google said things he can misrepresent as such.

Lots of very silly people (including Jordan) have been running around all week falsely claiming that Google has “admitted” that the Biden administration illegally censored people, and in response, they’re now reinstating accounts of people who were “unfairly censored.”

To be fair, this is what Google wants Jim Jordan and MAGA people to believe because it feeds into their pathetic victim narrative.

But it’s not what Google actually said for people who can read (and comprehend basic English). I won’t go through the entire letter, but let’s cover the supposed admission of censorship from the Biden admin:

Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies. While the Company continued to develop and enforce its policies independently, Biden Administration officials continued to press the Company to remove non-violative user-generated content.

It is not new, nor is it all that controversial, that the Biden administration did some outreach regarding COVID-19 content. But note what Google says here: “the Company continued to develop and enforce its policies independently.” In other words, Biden folks reached out, Google said “thanks, but that doesn’t violate our policies, so we’re not doing anything about it.”

Now, we can say that the government shouldn’t be in the business of telling private companies anything at all, but that’s a bit rich coming from the MAGA world that spent the last week focused on getting Disney to “moderate” Jimmy Kimmel out of a fucking job with actual threats of punishment if they failed to do so.

And that, once again, is the key issue: as the Supreme Court has long held, government officials are allowed to use “the bully pulpit” to seek to persuade companies as long as there is no implicit or explicit threat. Some will argue that the message here must have come with an implicit threat, and that’s an area where people can debate and differ on, though the fact that Google flat out admits that it basically told the Biden admin “no” seems to undermine that there was any threat included.

As online platforms, including Alphabet, grappled with these decisions, the Administration’s officials, including President Biden, created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding misinformation.

Again, this is not new. The Biden admin did this publicly and many of us called them out for it. The question is whether or not they reached the level of coercion.

Meanwhile, this is either accidental irony, or Google’s lawyers know that Jim Jordan would totally miss the sarcasm included in this next bit:

It is unacceptable and wrong when any government*, including the Biden Administration,* attempts to dictate how the Company moderates content*, and the Company has consistently fought against those efforts on First Amendment grounds.*

Why do I say it’s ironic? Because Jim Jordan’s subpoenas and demands to Google are very much a government official attempting to dictate how Google moderates content (in that he wants them to not moderate content he favors).

Indeed, right after this, Google starts groveling about how it’s so, so sorry that YouTube took moderation actions on conspiracy theory and nonsense peddler accounts that Jordan likes and thus will begin to reinstate them.

Yes, in the very letter where Google tells Jim Jordan “it’s wrong for the government to tell us how to moderate,” it also says “thank you for telling us how to moderate, we are following your demands.” Absolutely incredible.

Perhaps even more incredible is the discussion of fact checking. The company mentions that it doesn’t employ third-party fact checkers for YouTube to review content for moderation purposes:

In contrast to other large platforms, YouTube has not operated a fact-checking program that identifies and compensates fact-checking partners to produce content to support moderation. YouTube has not and will not empower fact-checkers to take action on or label content across the Company’s services.

Which in turn led Jordan to crow about how this was a huge success:

If you can’t read that, it’s Jordan saying:

But that’s not all. YouTube is making changes to its platform to prevent future censorship. YouTube is committing to the American people that it will NEVER use outside so-called “fact-checkers” to censor speech. No more telling Americans what to believe and not believe.

But fact checking is not “censorship.” It’s literally “more speech.” It’s not telling anyone what to believe or what not to believe. It’s providing additional information. You know, that whole “marketplace of ideas” that they keep telling us is so important.

Then, Jordan crowed directly about how his own efforts caused YouTube to reinstate people. In other words, in the same letter that he insists supports him and which says it is “unacceptable and wrong” for government officials “to dictate how the Company moderates content” he excitedly claims credit for dictating how YouTube should moderate content:

“Because of our work.” So you are flat out admitting that you have told Google how to moderate, and it is complying by reinstating accounts that you wanted them to reinstate.

That certainly would raise questions about unconstitutional jawboning if we didn’t live in a world in which it has been decided “it’s okay when Republicans do it” but not okay when Democrats do something much less direct or egregious.

It’s almost like there’s a double standard, and it’s very much like Google is willing to suck up to MAGA folks to take advantage of that double standard… just as Mark Zuckerberg did.

From Techdirt via this RSS feed