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Despite the appearance of conflict between Facebook and the US government, there is an insidious, censorious division of labour between the company and the State Department,
enabling both to evade public accountability.
The publication by The Intercept of Facebook's secret blacklist of 'Dangerous Individuals and Organisations' (DIO) it does not allow on its platform - from white supremacists, hate groups, militarised social movements, and alleged terrorists - provides a glimpse into how the social media network moderates content that it asserts could lead to violence offline.
There are two worrying dimensions to this latest revelation. The first is that
the list, particularly regarding the terrorism category, is drawn mainly from a sanctions list maintained by the Treasury Department and created by George W. Bush in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001.
These restrictions can be traced back to 2012, when in the face of growing alarm in Congress and the United Nations about online terrorist recruiting, Facebook
added to its 'Community Standards' a ban on
"organisations with a record of terrorist or violent criminal activity." Initially, this was modest. But today, this has morphed into
what's known as the DIO policy. This restricts what Facebook's
2.9 billion active global users (not just US citizens) can say about an enormous and ever-growing roster of entities it and the US State Department deem to be beyond the pale.
Facebook is effectively projecting US foreign policy globally. And if that's not worrying enough,
this legitimises its growing power to police global free speech -
an ability that has no limits because it is beyond public accountability.
Comment: Machines with license to kill have no accountability. The public is at the mercy of the programmers.