Amember of the Meta Oversight Board said in a recent livestream that Meta places “international human rights norms” above the First Amendment when it considers free speech issues. This admission is especially concerning considering a recent revelation that the FBI and CISA have renewed collaboration with social media companies to censor posts they label “disinformation.”
“As Meta became more global, it realized what an outlier the United States was, and could not simply default back to U.S. First Amendment jurisprudence,” said Kenji Yoshino, a member of the Meta Oversight Board, an independent entity that advises the platform. “Our baseline here is not the U.S. Constitution and free speech, but rather international human rights norms.”
Meta’s Censorship in Theory
Yoshino, a board member for the left-wing William J. Brennan Center for Justice, made this comment in a livestream with fellow Meta Oversight Board member and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution Michael McConnell. The National Constitution Center hosted the online panel on April 29, and its CEO Jeffrey Rosen moderated the discussion about ways Meta shapes content during elections.
Meta originally sought to follow the First Amendment, Yoshino said. But as Meta expanded across the world, he noted, it shifted its content policies beyond the First Amendment.
McConnell disagreed with Yoshino’s reasoning and said the more important distinction is the First Amendment’s application to private entities. But he admitted he agrees with Meta’s ability to censor content. “Even within the United States, private companies are free to not convey speech that they disagree with over their platforms,” he said.
Meta has always prohibited some content like obscenity from the very beginning, according to McConnell. The Wall Street Journal, however, reported last year that Meta-owned Instagram connected vast networks of pedophiles, and its algorithms promoted child sexual content.
Hellbound and Down 