We’ve just been through roughly a year of learning about the ways the government has forced social media companies to remove information it doesn’t like. Within that context, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley recently came down on the side of more government censorship. What was she thinking? This could be a campaign-ending blunder that was entirely unforced.
Here’s Haley in her own words on Fox News about why she believes the government should mandate every person using social media to “be verified” by their full name or be banned from the platform:
NEW: Nikki Haley asserts that allowing people to post on social media anonymously is a "national security threat". She promises that as president, she will force "every person on social media" to be "verified by their name."
I am no lawyer but isn't this blatantly… pic.twitter.com/MD7CcBZL5r
— Christina Pushaw ? ?? (@ChristinaPushaw) November 14, 2023
Where to start?
To begin with, Haley is sort of referring to antisemitism being spewed by leftists on social media today. The problem is that she’s taking a sledgehammer to the issue rather than a scalpel.
Step one of Haley’s plan seems less than ideal but less intolerable. Force social media companies to disclose their algorithm. Get everything out in the open so it’s clear who is being censored and why.
On the other hand, even that reeks of government interference in the private sector. If a company like Facebook or Google puts billions of dollars into development to decide how it procures, elevates, and perhaps hides content, then so be it. Customers can decide to shop elsewhere. Look at the rise of Bing and DuckDuckGo as alternatives to Google, for example.
Instead of forcing companies to give up their algorithms, let’s just ban government interference in the algorithm. The problem at Twitter and Facebook during the 2020 election was less about the companies themselves censoring and more about the FBI, CDC, Pfizer, and others telling private companies to censor speech from American citizens.
The second part of Haley’s plan, however, should send shivers down the spine of every freedom-loving American.
The right to speak anonymously in the public sphere without recrimination, so long as one is not advocating criminal behavior, is as inherent to free speech as anything else. Would we say you can’t speak on a street corner without holding a sign stating your full name and home address? Of course not. Then why is online activity different?
It’s the Russian bots, Haley says! The Russian boogeymen, often the favorite of Democrats during the 2016 and 2020 elections, are back and being used by a Republican to advocate for limiting the speech of Americans.
It’s somewhat like President George W. Bush saying we have to abandon capitalism to save capitalism. In Haley’s world, an anonymous account, of which there are many, espousing political views is the same as a Russian bot troll farm.
As one famously anonymous account put it, Haley’s position on this is borderline certifiable:
I’m really starting to believe that Nikki Haley is clinically insane and a complete psychopath.
I’m not kidding.
She’s nuts. https://t.co/uQEIypt9bW
— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) November 14, 2023
If there’s one thing that almost every red-blooding Republican can agree on it’s that big tech colluding with the government to censor right-leaning thought is a bad thing. What Haley’s proposing would further chill the ability of her side to speak out and take a stand without direct fear of recrimination from the liberal mob or the board of Pfizer.
In Haley’s world, for example, there would be no Libs of TikTok on X/Twitter exposing the sexualization of children being thrust into public schools. The original creator of the account was entirely anonymous to protect herself from the onslaught of hate and death threats sent her way by exposing the disgusting underworld of propagandizing children into transgender ideology.
Eventually, the Libs of TikTok creator, Chaya Raichik, was doxxed by a liberal Washington Post writer who felt it was imperative to expose the person exposing liberals in their own words. Since then, Raichik has doubled down and the Libs of TikTok account has exploded in growth continuing its mission to expose the way children are being abused in the name of transgenderism and hyper-sexualized. If Raichik, a successful real estate agent at the time, had to start the account with her verified name up front, it never would’ve happened.
Haley’s stance on curtailing anonymous speech is an indefensible position, especially among Republican primary voters. It’s no different than the way gun control disarms law-abiding citizens while criminals have free reign. Haley’s speech control would let the Russian bot farms run wild while honest Americans simply decide not to participate in the public arena for fear of risking their career if they say their’s only two genders and marriage is between a man and a woman.
Will Nikki Haley stand by this absurdity next month on the debate stage or will she find a way to walk it back before then?
