The announcement that Meta will stop fact-checking material on its platforms is neither surprising nor, at this point, relevant. Mark Zuckerberg’s absurd announcement that the company is “getting back to core principles,” or whatever bullshit way he said it, is no more appalling today than that same rhetoric has been for decades. None of this conduct is news or purely about sucking up to Trump (though that is certainly a factor). Cyberlibertarian ideology, which is much older than Zuckerberg, has long relied on a rhetorical tactic by which Big Tech sells the public the idea that its business purposes enhance or support democratic principles while pursuing an agenda that is exclusively anti-democratic. And the public has a long history of falling for this shell game.
It is accurate but incomplete to say that when X or Facebook mothballs internal accountability this is motivated by profit. To be sure, Big Tech’s PR and lobbying assault on the very idea of regulation, whether by government or its own policies, is partly driven by the financial value of frictionless platforms. Thus, the tedious reiteration that we must “Save the internet!” from Policy X or Regulation Y, usually paired with alleged defenses of the speech right, have long masked the truth that allowing conspiracy theories, lies, hate speech, harassment, foreign propaganda, and material harmful to children is profitable. And like the NRA’s playbook, these harms are repackaged as the price we pay for a “free and open internet.”
So, yes, that message is motivated by money, but it is about more than money. Zuckerberg, in describing the decision to stop fact-checking as a move back to “core principles,” is merely fulfilling his destiny as a young cyberlibertarian, heir to a bizarre philosophy that is authoritarian at its core. Hence, the complaint that Meta does not care whether it harms democracy misses the trick that harm to democracy is the goal and not a byproduct. That harm will level up (though not to its zenith) on January 20th, when a felon will retake the Oath of Office he already violated while millions of citizens participate in an ersatz America brought to you by Silicon Valley’s new and improved democracy of the screen.
In nearly every article on this subject since 2012, I have tried to present variations on the theme that whatever policy matter may be the issue of the moment, Big Tech’s underlying opposition is not limited to the proposal itself but to the idea that government should even function as the instrument of democracy. No surprise that David Golumbia articulates this sleight of hand so clearly when he writes, “We seem to be talking about copyright, freedom of speech, or the ‘democratization’ of information or some technology. But if we listen closely, we hear a different conversation that questions our right and ability to govern ourselves.” That’s it in a bombshell. And although other industries (e.g., tobacco and fossil fuel) have adopted this same rhetoric, no industry has ever had so much power to control the message—let alone to argue that the messenger itself is the messiah of liberty.
While the traditional libertarian views democratic institutions as obstacles to liberty, the cyberlibertarian advocates digital technology as the workaround which obviates the need for those institutions. This, as stated many times, is the premise under which Big Tech’s anti-copyright agenda was sold to the public as a “right of access and speech” stifled by government’s authority to write copyright law. The access/speech narrative, which appeals in different forms to both right and left sensibilities, disguised the fact that Silicon Valley both objects to copyright enforcement as a business interest, but also to the principle that Congress should protect creators’ rights as an ideological matter.
Cyberliberatarianism, which guides (I would say infects) the minds of far too many tech leaders and tech industry evangelists, scorns the mechanisms of government as an inefficient and clunky way to run a society. And the profoundly unqualified Elon Musk, as the putative new head of “national efficiency,” is a manifestation of this same magical thinking. But who bought the bullshit? Who believed that digital technology can and should operate as the alternative to a functional representative government? Everyone. Left, right and center.
Yes, there are some prominent voices we can blame for carrying the cyberlibertarian flag, and these include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Public Knowledge, Senator Wyden, Niskanen Center, Techdirt, Mike Masnick, Daphne Keller, Eric Goldman, Computer and Communications Industry Association, Cory Doctorow, Ed Snowden, Jonathan Band, Julian Assange, American Library Association, Brewster Kahle, John Perry Barlow, Eric Schmidt, the Cato Institute, and, at least in this context, the American Civil Liberties Union, to name a few representatives familiar to both liberals and conservatives.
Those parties, and far too many academics anointed with Silicon Valley oil, have all preached the cyberlibertarian gospel by advocating conveniently vague notions like “innovation” (appealing to conservatives) and “digital rights” (appealing to liberals). The former is a catch-all for the talking point that “regulation stifles innovation,” a thesis which never bothers to define either term. One need only watch the squabbles over AI to see this history repeating itself, with Big Tech arguing the deterministic importance of AI against any kind of statutory checks that might, for instance, bar the use of AI to exacerbate false information about real persons.
As for “digital rights,” if one wonders what distinguishes these rights from traditional civil rights, it’s a good question elided by the rhetoric of those who invented the term. That said, “digital rights” consistently include a presumed right to free and unfettered access to everything; a presumed right to remain anonymous under all circumstances; and the maximalist view that all material posted online, no matter how harmful, should be treated as protected speech. That these “rights” contradict the administration of civil rights everywhere other than cyberspace is an inconvenient truth that remains un-addressed.
In combination, these cyberlibertarian “core principles” add up to zero accountability for digital tech corporations promoting the illusion that their products foster greater accountability from the real enemy of liberty—democratic government. This is how I believe the ordinary imperfections of government became so much fuel for galloping conspiracy theories and preposterous narratives that rage across the web like a California wildfire. But if we vote as if the government is the enemy, then eventually it will be. And in this light, Meta’s announcement that it will shit-can accountability is not a pivot to the right, but a continuation of a long goose-step toward the far right that has been baked into that industry’s ideology for generations.
Assuming we will not all simultaneously cancel Facebook in protest, perhaps we can at least stop doing Big Tech’s bidding every time a policy proposal is made that the industry opposes. Whether the issue is Section 230 reform, artificial intelligence, countering mass piracy, image-based sexual abuse, child safety, etc., it might at least help if we reject any messaging promoted under that tiresome and disingenuous headline that we risk “losing the internet as we know it.” Facebook’s latest announcement is just another example that we can afford to take exactly that risk.
