Do we need hall monitors? Last week Elon Musk released the “Twitter Files,” revealing that the company blocked anything it wanted related to the Hunter Biden laptop story—wrongly it turned out. I wrote a column in October 2020 on social-media bias that Twitter restricted for many users simply because I mentioned the ban and Ukrainian payoffs. In addition, Mr. Musk previously accused Apple of threatening to remove Twitter from its App Store after his company uncanceled Donald Trump and others. Apple CEO Tim Cook then walked Mr. Musk around the company’s spaceship headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., and assured him that “Apple never considered doing so.” Sunshine can be a pre-emptive disinfectant.
Apple could censor any time it wants. Its App Store, the only one on the iPhone, with fees that would make Tony Soprano blush, demands that apps “not include content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy.” OK, that sounds creepy.
And Apple does censor. The social-media app Parler was suspended from the App Store for more than three months in 2021. A video app named Odysee also has issues. According to Tucker Carlson and Fox News, “Apple presented Odysee with a list of nearly two dozen search terms, most related to Covid, that it had to ban if it wanted to join the App Store.” I decided to see for myself. I downloaded Odysee and typed in “covid origin china.” Sure enough, a screen popped up warning me: “This search term is restricted for iOS users of Odysee.” I find it offensive that Apple can decide what is offensive.
Other companies are doing the same. The “China Uncensored” podcast notes that if you type “protests in Chi,” Google offers to autocomplete with Chile or Chicago, but not China. And in July 2021, Clarke Humphrey, a member of the Biden administration Covid-19 response team, wanted Facebook to remove an Anthony Fauci parody Instagram account. He emailed the company: “Any way we can get this pulled down? It is not actually one of ours.” The reply came in under 60 seconds: “Yep, on it!”
That’s right, the public square of social media is no longer in public, it sits partly inside a government building. Apple, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are like nerdy grade-school hall monitors. That’s also creepy.
Doesn’t this all sound familiar? I typed “June 4, 1989” into Google and got “Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.” When I typed the same thing into China’s leading search engine, Baidu…
