The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter.
The National Science Foundation is financing the creation of a web service that will monitor “suspicious memes” and what it considers “false and misleading ideas,” with a major focus on political activity online.
The “Truthy” database, created by researchers at Indiana University, is designed to “detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution.”
The university has received $919,917 so far for the project. [Source for this information is Elizabeth Barrington at Washington Free Beacon and FoxNews.com 8/26/14]
“The project stands to benefit both the research community and the public significantly,” the grant states. “Our data will be made available via [application programming interfaces] APIs and include information on meme propagation networks, statistical data, and relevant user and content features.”
“The open-source platform we develop will be made publicly available and will be extensible to ever more research areas as a greater preponderance of human activities are replicated online,” it continues. “Additionally, we will create a web service open to the public for monitoring trends, bursts, and suspicious memes.”
“This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate,” the grant said.
And what constitutes “hate speech”? No definition is offered. Nor will it be; that’s the whole point.
When the government starts using tax money to restrict or in any way regulate “hate speech” — with government being the one who defines “hate” — then freedom in America is gone, in principle. The rest is only a matter of time, if this is left unchallenged.
“Hate” here is code for dissension. Dissenting opinions, once labeled hateful, become illegal the moment government is involved.
As disturbing as all of this is, the most troubling part is the very concept of “social pollution.” What on earth is “social pollution”? This is the closest to the language of dictatorship ever talked about in American society, particularly in the context of using government funds and grants to implement it.
Clearly, what constitutes “social pollution” depends on the person using the term. To a Christian fundamentalist, social pollution is any talk of abortion or gay marriage. To a militant Muslim, social pollution is any talk against the Islamic faith. To a progressive Obama supporter in New York or San Francisco, social pollution is any language that disparages gays, racial minorities, or government-mandated social insurance.
The point is: Social pollution, however you define it, is talk. Talk, at least on one’s own private property and at one’s own expense, should never be against the law. Nobody who endorses these government-financed rationalizations for dictatorship would ever tolerate them, if applied to themselves.
The important question here isn’t what is “social pollution.” The question here is: Why is government getting into the act of defining and regulating it?
Just last week, I wondered why the beheading of an American journalist by a newly formed Islamic government overseas didn’t get at least some reaction from the mainstream of Americans, to say nothing of our President. It didn’t happen. Will there be any reaction to this? Not from liberal-progressives; so long as their guys are in charge of defining what “hate” or social “pollution” is, they will have no problem with it. Perhaps from conservatives, but not for the right reasons. If and when they get back in charge again, they probably would not have any problem defining hate or social pollution as they see fit, and using government funds to do so — once the precedent has been established.
Most of our legal, political and philosophical ideas come out of academia. Here’s what an abstract in the University of California/Berkeley law review states:
Since our legal system often fails to provide relief where implicit bias has caused systemic discrimination, advocates for equity and inclusion should explore preventative measures that guard against the harms of this kind of systemic discrimination.
“Explore preventative measures.” Against what? Speech or thoughts/ideas the “legal system” considers improper, hateful, insensitive, or otherwise intolerable. That’s censorship, people!
It goes on:
This Comment argues that a new term “social pollution” should be used to properly classify systemic discrimination caused by implicit bias as a problem that should be regulated. [Source: Regulating the Social Pollution of Systemic Discrimination Caused by Implicit Bias, L. Elizabeth Sarine, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu]
Government should classify and define “social pollution” and proceed to “regulate” it. In other words, establish reprimands, fines and even prison sentences for violating these speech mandates.
Is it a stretch to call this censorship? If you think it’s a stretch, you’re living in the fool’s paradise (a contradiction in terms).
There is no such thing as “social pollution,” so far as the law or government should be concerned. You’re free to consider any ideas or cultural material you wish to be the mental equivalent of pollution; I know I do. But you’re likewise free to reject that material, keep it out of your mental space and to bestow upon it whatever disapproval you wish. Nobody has a right to prevent its dissemination, however.
The Founders of the United States — Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Paine and others — often wrote about the wisdom and common sense of the American people that they hoped would always prevail over the proliferation of toxic ideas antithetical to freedom of speech.
Is anybody out there paying attention? The very same federal government who (most agree) botches up nearly everything it touches, from education to health care to immigration, is now to be in charge of “truthiness.”
Neither George Orwell nor Ayn Rand could have envisioned anything quite so absurd.
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