The Daily Signal - What Does Facebook's New Oversight Board Mean for Conservative Posts?

Episode Date: May 15, 2020

Facebook recently announced the first 20 members of its new Oversight Board. The role of the board is to guide Facebook through decisions on what controversial content should be allowed to stay up or be deleted.   Michael McConnell, professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and a co-chair of Facebook’s Oversight Board, joins the podcast to discuss what the institution of the board may mean for conservatives and how he plans to work alongside the liberal members of the group.    We also discuss these stories:    President Trump is critical of Obama administration officials who unmasked his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina is stepping down from his chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee due to his stock sales being investigated.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell criticizes Democrats’ $3 trillion coronavirus package.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, May 15. I'm Russel Dahl Judas. And I'm Virginia Allen. Facebook recently announced the first 20 members of their oversight board. The role of the board is to guide Facebook through decisions on what controversial content should be left up or taken down. Michael McConnell, professor of constitutional law at Sanford Law School and a co-chair of Facebook's new oversight board, joins the show to discuss what the institution of the board. joins the show to discuss what the institution of the board may mean for conservative content and how he plans to work alongside the more progressive left members of the group. Don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

Now on to our top news. President Trump says that the Obama administration officials who unmasse former national security advisor Michael Flynn in surveillance documents, a Russia ambassador, Sergei Kisliak, should go to jail. In other words, Obama administration officials knew that someone in the U.S. was speaking to Kisliak and ask intelligence officials for that person's name. Generally, in surveillance, the identity of some persons is kept vague unless requested otherwise. Here's what the president had to say in an interview release Thursday with Fox Business's Mornings with Maria.

It was the greatest political crime in the history of our country. If I were a Democrat instead of a Republican, I think everybody would have been in jail a long time ago, and I'm talking with 50-year sentences. It is a disgrace what's happened. This is the greatest political scam, hoax in the history of our country. And people should be going to jail for this stuff, and hopefully a lot of people are going to have to pay.

No other president should have to go through. And I'll tell you, General Flynn and others are heroes, heroes, because what's happened to them, they weren't after General Flynn. They wanted him to lie about me, make up a story. And with few exceptions, nobody did that. There were many people. I watched KT. McFarland the other day.

I watched where she was Knock Knock FBI, you know, the FBI. you know, the FBI, okay? This was all Obama. This was all Biden. These people were corrupt. The whole thing was corrupt. And we caught them. We caught them.

And what you saw just now, I watched Biden yesterday. He could barely speak. He was on Good Morning America, right? And he said he didn't know anything about it. And now it just gets released. Right after he said that, it gets released that he was one of the unmaskers,

meaning he knew everything about it. So he lied to your friend, George Stephanopoulos. Senator Lindsey Graham isn't taking to President Trump's call for former President Barack Obama to testify. On Thursday, Trump tweeted, If I were a senator or a congressman, the first person I would call to testify about the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA by far is former President Obama. He knew everything. Do it at Lindsay Graham SC. Just do it.

No more Mr. Nice Guy. no more talk. Trump's tweet comes at a time where it's been revealed top Obama administration officials were among those who requested former national security advisor Michael Flynn's identity to be revealed or unmasked. But a statement from Graham implied he wouldn't be inclined to do so. No president is above the law, Graham said in the statement. However, the presidency has executive privilege claims against other branches of government. As to the Judiciary Committee, both presidents are welcome to come before the committee and share their concerns about each other. If nothing else, it would make for great television. However, I have doubts about whether it would be

wise for the country. Graham did say that his committee will begin holding multiple in-depth congressional hearings regarding all things related to crossfire hurricanes starting in early June. A former Health and Human Services official testified before the House on Thursday. Rick Bright is the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Bright has been openly critical of the Trump administration's handling of the coronavirus, and after being reassigned to a new position, he came forward saying that he was ignored when he gave early warnings about the need to produce more personal and protective equipment for hospital workers. Furthermore, he says the reason for his recent

reassignment is due to his opposition to the administration's push to allow access to the malaria drugs, chloroquine, and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 before proper testing could be done. Here is a portion of Bright's opening remarks before Congress via C-SPAN. Initially, our nation was not as prepared as we should have been, as we could have been. Some scientists raised early warning signals that were overlooked. And pages from our pandemic playbook were ignored by some in leadership. There will be plenty of time to look back to assess what has happened so we can improve. But right now we need to focus on getting things right going forward.

Shortly before the hearing began, President Trump tweeted, I don't know the so-called whistleblower Rick Bright, never met him or even heard of him. But to me, he is a disgruntled employee, not liked or respected by people I spoke to, and who, with his attitude, should no longer be working for our government. Outside the White House on Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, said Bright's allegations do not hold water via a clip from Fox News. Take a listen. So, you know, Dr. Bright is up there testifying today.

Everything he's complaining about was achieved. Everything he talked about was done. He says he talked about the need for respirators. We worked, we procured respirators under the president's direction. He said we need a Manhattan project for vaccines. This president initiates a vaccine Manhattan Project, Diagnostic Manhattan Project, therapeutic Manhattan Project. Oh, and by the way, whose job was it to actually lead the development of vaccines? Dr. Bright. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina is stepping down from his chairmanship of the

Senate Intelligence Committee for the time being due to his stock sales being investigated. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the development Thursday in a statement saying, Senator Burr contacted me this morning to inform me of his decision to step a seat. side as chairman of the Intelligence Committee during the pendency of this investigation. McConnell said, adding, we agreed that this decision would be in the best interest of the committee and will be effective at the end of the day tomorrow. On Thursday, Burtle-Media, this is a distraction to the hard work of the committee and the members, and I think the security of the country is too important to have a distraction. The development comes as the Department of Justice continued

investigations since March of the congressman's sale of up to 1.72 million in stocks earlier this year, the Hill reported. Burr has been accused of insider trading, which he denies, because he sold stocks after a coronavirus briefing, but before the stock markets tumult due to the pandemic. Unemployment claims have hit 36.5 million. The Department of Labor released its latest unemployment claims report on Thursday, revealing that an additional 2.9 million people applied for unemployment last week. This is a decline, though, from the 3.1 million claims filed the previous week. Peter Bukvar, chief investment officer of Bleakley Advisory Group, told CNBC that the numbers are still alarming, of course, but with more reopenings occurring in the coming months,

they should continue to recede. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that he isn't a fan of Democrats' three trillion coronavirus recovery package, which, if passed, will be the fourth such relief package passed by Congress. Here's what he had to say about the legislation during Senate floor speech Thursday, via the first. This week, the Speaker published an 1800-page seasonal catalog of left-wing audited. So here we go again. Here we go again. It includes a massive tax code giveaway to high earners in blue states. Working families are struggling to put food on the table,

but House Democrats are prioritizing millionaires on the coasts. It would print another round of checks specifically for listening to this, illegal immigrants. Another round of checks for illegal immigrants. Can you believe it? Madam President? We forgot to have the Treasury Department send money to people here illegally. My goodness, what an oversight.

Thank goodness, Democrats are on the case. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Professor Michael McConnell about what Facebook's new oversight board means for conservatives. I'm Amy Swearer. And I'm John Carlo Canaparo. And if you want to understand what's happening at the Supreme Court, be sure to check out SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast. We take a look at the cases, the personalities, and the gossip at the highest court in the land.

It's SCOTUS 101. I am joined my Michael McConnell, Professor and Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and a co-chair of Facebook's new oversight board. Professor McConnell, thank you so much for being here today. It's a pleasure. Now, to begin, can you just tell you? us a little bit about the mission and purpose of Facebook's oversight board and how you came to be one of the four co-chairs of the board? Well, the mission and purpose is that, you know, over the years, Facebook has become the leading platform of communication around the world. And with that, you know, have come, you know, controversies and problems.

what gets posted, what comes down, and the company realized that it was not a good thing for any one entity, even itself, to be making these important free speech decisions. And what they decided to do was to create an outside board of independent-minded people with experience and free expression issues to give a second look to the decisions made by the company about content moderation. So if you post on Facebook and Facebook decides to take your message down, then you can come to the oversight board for a second opinion on that, and Facebook has agreed that it will comply with the oversight board's decisions.

Now, as for me, I don't exactly know. Nobody really tells you where your own name comes from, but I do teach freedom of speech and religion and press right in Facebook's backyard at Stanford. So I guess in Silicon Valley, when you're talking about issues of that sort, my name would come up pretty quickly. I'm also a former federal judge, so that probably also attracted some favorable attention.

Well, we're certainly glad to see you on the board. Now, you have said that Facebook has one of the most influential roles to play in deciding what can and can't be said in our culture today. That's a little scary, but I think that you're absolutely right. How does Facebook saying this is or is not something that you can say on our, our platform threatened free speech in general? Well, Facebook from the beginning has had some restrictions. It is a platform that's supposed to be a good place for families. And so it's had, for example, an anti-nudity policy, quite rigid anti-nudity policy from the beginning. And, you know, other issues have come up over time. They have what they call the Facebook community standards

which is an elaboration of their policies in what can and can't be expressed. It's right on the net. You can look it up and read the community standards for yourselves. Many of those, though, are, as you would expect, somewhat vague and subject to different kinds of interpretation. So that leads to many controversies. Now, as a mechanical matter, first there's the use of AI and algorithms to find some kinds of impermissible content. I think I don't, you know, I'm not much of an empirical guy, but, you know, I think something like 80 or 90% of this is elimination of bots, which are not artificially generated posts that aren't coming from human beings at all.

And AI is pretty good at identifying bots. But in addition to that, Facebook has three different monitoring centers around the world. Each of them having about 10,000 employees who review the posts and see whether they comply with of Facebook community standards. Then on top of that, someone who doesn't like the decision that Facebook has made has the right to appeal it within the company. And they would get a yes or no answer, but no explanation. And that's where it rested or has rested up until now. And the idea of the Oversight Board is to give people an opportunity to appeal these decisions to a group of out.

independent outsiders who will take another look, make a decision, and this time, you actually provide an explanation, a rationale in writing so that people can find out, you know, why their post was up or why it was down, and we'll be able to evaluate whether the decisions are being made on a reasonable and a neutral ideologically and culturally neutral basis. Now, the difficulty of this is that the volume is so immense with billions of posts and, you know, hundreds of thousands of controversies. Obviously, the oversight for we're all going to be working part-time. We can't begin to look at all of the appeals. And so one of our tasks is going to be to figure out how best to select from that.

that mass of possibilities of the cases to focus attention on. So we're going to have a committee, a case selection committee that looks at a large number of these cases quite quickly and superficially and then identifies the ones that will have the most impact. And I mean, we could talk about the criteria for that. But the main point is that, you know, even once we're up and running not every dispute can go to the board. We're only going to be able to decide a tiny fraction of the appeals. No, that's interesting to hear some of that background. I do want to ask just about how we kind of as conservatives should be viewing this board

because here at the Heritage Foundation, we've experienced Facebook pulling down our content over wording that they saw as objectionable. and later they did restore that content. But this is a pattern that we see with Facebook. So with the implementation of the oversight board, are you optimistic that conservative groups and individuals will be treated impartially on the platform? Well, we'll see, but it's my hope

that this is going to be one of the major contributions of the board is to bring a kind of ideological neutrality to these decisions. you know, it's hard to know exactly what the source of all these problems has been. But, you know, you think of, you know, Facebook as a profit-making company and it responds to consumer pressure. And it just so happens in this world that the most pressure, you know, the loudest, noisiest voices tend to be those who are advocating censorship. and often of censorship of people on the conservative side of the spectrum. And companies respond to the squeaky wheel.

It's my hope that when an outside group that is pledged to be ideologically neutral and objective then takes a look at this in a more deliberative way where we don't, you know, we don't really care about Facebook as a company. What we care about is the charge to promote freedom of expression in a neutral way. I'm hoping that this board will have the effect, maybe not in every single case. And I'm sure no one is going to agree with all of the decisions. but overall to have a more even-handed and fair-minded and certainly more transparent system. Yeah.

Do you know how the board anticipates handling hate speech issues, for example? These are issues that can often involve pretty complicated matters. So let's say that someone posts a cartoon that is making fun of Islam and a Muslim-majority country. How would the board deal with that? Well, I can't speak to any specific question because that's what we'll be deciding. Hate speech is both a real problem on the one hand, but also an extremely slippery concept on the other. And if it's interpreted to include merely being offensive or annoying or insulting, then freedom of speech values are really seriously compromised.

And you mentioned the Muhammad Cartoons episode. It is interesting that several members of the board had real-world experience with that particular controversy. One of the co-chairs, Hela Thorningshmit, who was the prime minister of Denmark when that controversy was going on. And she defended the publication of those cartoons, even though part of the result of that were some deaths from people being attacked by people offended by the cartoons. And yet her reaction was that freedom of speech demands the ability to publish things of that sort, even if they are offensive to some people. And there's another member of the board from the Middle East itself who publicly defended the publication of the cartoons, which was really quite an act of courage. Yeah, absolutely. Well, gender identity is another controversial issue that obviously we see come up quite a lot in the news.

So, you know, with some activists arguing that using someone's birth gender instead of their adoptive gender is, hate speech, Twitter has already banned misgendering people. How do you anticipate Facebook handling this issue and similar ones? I mean, I don't know. You know, that might very well be a particular case that comes up. And I can't anticipate how my colleagues and I will be deciding particular questions. Yeah, no, that's very fair. We'll wait and see. Well, yourself, and John Samples, the vice president of Cato, are really the only known figures on the political right among the first 20 board appointees. Are you confident that your views and opinions will actually be heard? Well, let me tell you, I don't intend to be sitting around as a potted plant.

If my voice is not heard, I won't be around for very long. I won't put up with it. I like it. Straightboard answer. The board is internationally very diverse, and it represents countries from all over the world. And some, such as the Free Speech Alliance, have raised concerns about this, saying that the board will be unable or unwilling to embrace America's First Amendment ideas of free speech. Is this a concern that you have? Well, I think anyone needs to be concerned

because it is true that the American understanding of freedom of speech is often more expansive than that elsewhere. But two points about it. One is that politics and ideology and free speech around the world are complicated. So there are quite a few people even on the board, but I really mean people around the world who live under authoritarian regimes that are hostile to freedom of speech. And they mean their politics of the dissidents may not be, you know, very similar to the politics of American conservatives. But they, in many cases, are as passionately committed to freedom of expression as any of us may be. And we have, you know, members of the board who grew up in, you know,

under extremely adverse, even totalitarian circumstances. And for them, you know, freedom of speech is part of what they live and breathe. And the second thing about this is that, you know, these influences can go both ways. And I understand that, you know, there are those who, you know, worry that the less libertarian notions of freedom of speech that we often see around the world will influence a speech in the United States through this board. But it's my hope that it'll be the other way around, that this will be an opportunity for. for American free speech values to have a platform and to become more influential abroad. Considering just that diversity among the oversight board, are you confident that the board will be able to really kind of act and rule in unity in those situations when it really matters on important issues around? free speech?

I don't know. I mean, that's really something we have to see. I see this board as an experiment rather than a panacea. And, you know, a couple of years from now ask me that question again, and I can give you more of my reaction. I do think that there are grounds for hope, though, because although there is a tremendous diversity of all kinds of dimensions among the members of the board. I think that they all do have in common some very serious commitment to freedom of expression

within the cultures from which we all come. And I hope, and think I have reason to hope, that that is going to play out and that the board will be able to work together for, you know, a world in which people can, can speak and also be safe. So how do you hope to influence your fellow board members to maybe more so embrace those principles of free speech for those who, you know, might just be a little bit more apprehensive to do so? Oh, I'll need a little bit. I'll need a little prayer for that. It's not, you know, I have been an advocate for freedom of speech and freedom of religion my entire adult life.

I have carried this message even within American academia, which is no less homogeneous than, you know, some of the, environments will be working in here. And, you know, I really believe that, you know, that John Milton and John Stuart Mill and Thomas Jefferson had it right when they argued that suppression of free opinion, of suppression of error, as John Milton would call it, is not good. for human beings and for society. And if that's right, then maybe the message will carry. Now, you said very clearly earlier,

which I appreciated that if your views and opinions are not really, I guess, taken seriously and upheld on the board, that you wouldn't stick around. But considering the fact that you are one of the only figures on the board that is conservative, are you at all worried about other board members trying to push you out? No, it never occurred to me.

Okay, good. I'm glad to hear that. Now I know that some conservatives are concerned that Facebook essentially has created the oversight board to be almost like a shield for themselves so that they won't have to necessarily take that brunt of, you know, when there is kind of questionable action taken. And do you, I mean, do you think that there's weight to this argument? Well, I don't really care what Facebook's motivation is.

What I care about is that this is a mechanism for a second look and for contradicting Facebook when it is improperly taking material down. And that's what really matters. Yeah. I want to ask you one other content question. You know, in our generation, increasingly, we constantly see a lot of memes on the internet. And sometimes those memes can be quite crude. They use kind of various types of humor and content that can be offensive, though.

So how do you anticipate really navigating humor as a factor when you're considering what stays up what comes down, what's constituted as hate speech, what's not. My, I think it's going to be hard, not just humor, but satire too and deliberate exaggeration. These are things that are a part, especially in the United States, this is, you know, this is part of the way we communicate is through humor and satire and exaggeration and if, to treat all of these things as if they were just straightforward statements of fact would just be a massive, a misunderstanding of the social phenomenon. I do worry that around the world that these things are, that they're different norms and different understandings. And while I think that it's

essential that the same standards of freedom of speech are applied everywhere, I do think it's important for the board to be culturally sensitive so that something that might be understood to be satire in the United States, a similar thing might not be understood as satire elsewhere. And we need to make sure that we are as culturally literate as possible so that we understand the meaning of these communications. in the context where they occur. It's not going to be easy. Yeah, certainly a challenge.

Now, what are two or three things that you hope the board can implement over the course of the first year or so that will really empower Facebook users to feel comfortable exercising their free speech rights on the platform? First of all, I think it's going to be very helpful to have some explanations of reasons

I think one of the biggest frustrations for Facebook users is that it's been such a black box that no one really knows why one thing is up and why something else is down. And the oversight board is going to explain the reasons for what we do. And I think that alone, whether you like the decisions or not, I just think getting reasons is going to be a big advantage. And second thing is I think that, at least I hope, that the board is going to be independent-minded enough to be able to take a step back from all of the kind of noise and pressure of the moment. that social media is plagued by a kind of mass hysteria that is deeply contrary to both liberty and just to rationality. And I do hope, and I really do, and I say hope, I'm very hopeful that this board is going to be able to be, to separate. itself from that and not to be, not to succumb to that. So let's see a third thing. This is probably not on the immediate agenda, but something that I would like to see us do eventually is to take a look

at the fact-checking process. We will not be in a position ever to overrule fact-checking on each individual piece. But I think we might be able to, and I hope we'll be able to do some auditing of the fact-checking process and see how it's going, you know, how, I think there's serious concerns that fact-checking is biased

and perhaps not always as factual as it is made out to be. I think the principle of fact-checking is a very good idea, but if political bias is smuggled in in the name of fact-checking, we all are made much worse off as a result. And we would need to look at this objectively and not just, not assume that it's problematic, but also not. assume that just because people call themselves fact checkers, that they're necessarily all that interested in the facts. Professor McConnell, what would you say to conservative Facebook users who frankly are worried that the oversight board in the long term will mean more censorship of their content on Facebook?

I don't actually understand why it would. I think that the overwhelming institutional drive here is going to be the opposite. That the demands for more censorship are powerful out in the world of Facebook's customers. I think that to have a process which is focused on deliberation is going to be a calming influence for that. I don't see why it would be an aggravating influence. And then I also think that if people look at the records of the members of the board, not with a point of view of what is their politics, but rather from the point of view of what has been their stance on freedom of speech, that people should be reassured. Conservatives should be among those who are reassured.

And, you know, I am now old enough, gray hair and all, old enough to remember when sort of left progressives used to be part of their orthodoxy was to defend freedom of speech, even for people that they disagreed with. That, I think, has been going away. It's been diminishing in power in the United States and elsewhere. But it isn't gone. It isn't absent. It is still a very respectable and somewhat common view. And I think that many members of this board, even if you can look at them and say, well, I don't like their politics, but I think many members of the board are going to be

standing up for freedom of speech for people that they don't necessarily agree with. Professor McConnell, thank you. I just really appreciate hearing your insight and your perspective. I think this is incredibly helpful, and I hope it's a great resource for all of our listeners. So thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. Thank you for the chance. And that'll do it for today's episode.

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