Background provided by Faithwire:
Live Action Permanently Banned from Pinterest for Spreading ‘Harmful Misinformation’
By Tré Goins-Phillips Editor June 11, 2019
https://www.faithwire.com/2019/06/11/live-action-permanently-banned-from-pinterest-for-spreading-harmful-misinformation/
A statement from Pinterest informed Live Action its page was “permanently suspended because its contents went against our policies on misinformation.” The note went on to claim Live Action spreads “medical misinformation and conspiracies that turn individuals and facilities into targets for harassment and violence.”
This is not "you are not welcome in the club" as per a private dislike. This is more like doing some kind of public justice.
This means, Mark Shea's analogy of a platform deplatforming someone with a club showing someone the door fails. This one:
Mission Creep
May 8, 2019 by Mark Shea
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2019/05/mission-creep-2.html
He had echoed some who said "you make your own printing press", "you make your own TV channel", "you make your own internet platform", a theme on which I saw a caricature following up with "own government" and the glib PC's going "wait a minute ...". Here is his version:
The people shown the door by Facebook are not having their free speech impinged in the slightest. They can go find some seamy spot on Stormfront or elsewhere on the Dark Web and talk all they like. But FB, Twitter and any other platform that doesn’t want Nazis, racists, and conspiracy theorists does not owe them a thing.
Now, for National Socialists marked out as National Socialists (for instance not an Austrofascist mislabelled as one) and for Racialists openly acting as Racialists (I was shocked to see a Swedish NS site use the expression "race foreigner" or "race stranger"), that is all fine and dandy. If people wanting explicitly NS content know they cannot get it on FB, fine. Then they know they need to look for it elsewhere.
Like, if you go to Pinterest, you know you can't get porn. But we have a very different situation when Pinterest labels a pro-life site with a "porn block" filter.
Let's give an analogy. FB, Twitter, Pinterest are very large social media.
As of the first quarter of 2019, Facebook had 2.38 billion monthly active users.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/
Twitter reported that the number of monthly active users is declining. Twitter claimed 321 million monthly users, down 9 million, or more than 2 percent from the same time last year. Feb 7, 2019
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/02/07/twitter-reveals-its-daily-active-user-numbers-first-time/
Social network Pinterest has 265 million monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2019. As of that period, the visual bookmarking platform had 85 million MAU in the United States, compared to 206 million international monthly active users.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/463353/pinterest-global-mau/
Note, this is not like when a social medium requires you to be a certain type of person and you aren't, like Helgon net requires you to be open mind (not stating about what) and alternative (not stating to what), Haket required you to be writing poetry and short stories, I think it is down, Silverplanet requires you to be young ... you get the idea. When opening a profile, you describe yourself in certain terms. FB, twitter, Pinterest are not like this.
If a thing like Live Action is banned on more and more of the big social media, it comes out as a ban on free speech.
Now, in the article, Mark Shea shows a stick-figure comic stating free speech is protected only against government intereference against free speech.
This is not the case. I am not sure whether you heard of Castellucci's "on the concept of the face, regarding the Son of God." I and SSPX considered this piece as blasphemy, some SSPX went to pray a rosary outside the theatre as a peaceful protest (and of course as a way of making up for it before God's justice, as a reparation), when I wanted to join them a police officer pointed a gun to me. One of those who had got there in time got his leg ran over and fractured by police. Why so? Because, France takes "free speech" seriously, as a constitutional value. This means that "entrave à la liberté d'expression" (which I consider praying outside the theatre was not directly) is legally an offense, not just in police officers, but in any private citizen.
Imagine Trump had backed down on border wall, and also said border police are not allowed to detain illegal immigrants in prisons or take away their children - would you condone or imagine US would condone the continuation of such practises by private vigilante groups? No. So, obviously, when government restricts its own action against free speech, it also logically restricts other people's action against free speech.
You are shown out of your local pub, because the barman considers you a Nazi? No hindrance on free speech, since for one thing a pub is meant as much for drinking as for talking, and for another, the clientele of the pub tend to be a close knit set of people, or perhaps more correctly several such, at different hours. The barman's action would be the equivalent of a group of friends telling you to go away and play with someone else because "you don't belong with us". If the guy contested being a Nazi he could claim damages for being called that, but not totally for being shown the door. The barman might owe the non-Nazi beers, but not in his pub.
Now, getting shown out of FB, Twitter, Pinterest is more like a newspaper being banned from using post-office to distribute to households making a subscription, or the private company Tidningsbärarne (owned by major dailies in Scania, and I worked for them one summer on weekends, when I was less than half as old as now) deciding one of the papers, willing to pay the service and part owner (ok, part owner is where the analogy breaks down), no longer can use it, because the other major papers decide they dislike the political stance of that paper. Won't happen, the company no longer exists as such, but that could constitute breach of contract and hindrance to freedom of speech.
To an internet content provider, commercial or otherwise, FB functions among other things as a logistics company.
The company Tidningsbärarne may certainly decree "we don't do comics, they need the post office, otherwise our distributors have too much to carry some days", but it cannot stamp Arbetet as a comic, just because this daily extends the usual comic strips from one page to two pages. If they did and tried to ban Arbetet from distribution on that ground, one might suspect that Sydsvenskan, Svenska Dagbladet, Skånska Dagbladet had decided what amounted to a hindrance on freedom of speech because Arbetet was too unions' friendly. As said, since the company no longer exists, it won't happen.
You see what the difference is between banning a person from a close knit circle of friends and actually deplatforming someone from where he had freedom of speech and with it outreach to an audience. The latter reminds of banning free speech. As for alleged ground "some people don't want to listen" all social media I use have a "block" function : anyone who does not want to listen to Farrakhan can block him. Now, one may of course also state FB has liability for giving Farrakhan a platform for speech which might be illegal.
If Farrakhan tried to sue FB, and FB replied "we don't want to be crushed in court like Alex Jones" (at least Mark Shea considers Alex Jones was so, and FB is likely to agree with the sentiment, I don't know which affair it is about), the court could of course rule, FB was in fact protecting the legal version of free speech against someone committing illegal acts of utterance. In France that would be likelier for Farrakhan than in US.
The point is, such a ban on FB - especially if followed up by other social media bans - would be in fact a ban on a certain type of speech, and in cases not Louis Farrakhan on Jews in French justice (perhaps not even in that case) this ban could be seen as banning speech on non-legal grounds.
There may come a day when banned speech comes back as a not bannable government, and there may be a day when abortion personnel are getting handcuffed and pushed around by police officers.
Meanwhile, Pinterest has not acted as a club showing someone the door, Pinterest has acted like someone concerned with public interest, and ... wait, did I make a pun revealing the etymology for their name? .... making allegations about the person showed the door. In fact allegations about criminal behaviour, and such allegations can be punished if untrue.
Also, it seems Pinterest used a porn block to implement the permanent ban.
This is insult, disinformation, and could make a China man using Pinterest believe Live Action refers to pornographic content. (Let's say he tries to link to them, then gets a no to publication, with motivation "porn blocklist" and he is overconfident in "artificial intelligence" and believes a super intelligent computer has detected Live Action deals in porn). This not being the case, I think Live Action could very well sue Pinterest.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibl. Parmentier
Ember Wednesday of Pentecost
12.VI.2019
I think FB has a more clearly neutral profile than Mastershop Cakepiece. I think some fair judge based on that and on much larger consequences from a ban from FB or Pinterest could argue Pinterest was discriminating, Masterpiece Cakeshop was sticking to a set policy. Not baking a gender transition cake is same policy as not baking a gay wedding "wedding" cake. Not baking for someone who previously sued one in court is fairly common among bakers or barmen./HGL
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