Despite a widely cited Media Research Center poll showing that Big Tech censorship altered 2020 presidential election results, Meta Oversight Board member Pamela San Martín claimed Facebook’s censorship was not sufficient. San Martín called for more censorship in a January interview with WIRED. She not only demanded increased censorship but announced that the Board has made a “lot of the decisions and the case selection” with the 2024 election in mind. She also urged Meta to strike “preemptively” for its election censorship.

San Martín’s suggestions for Meta include “adding labels to posts that are related to elections, directing people to reliable information, prohibiting paid advertisement when it calls into question the legitimacy of elections, and implementing WhatsApp forward limits.” Her advice to coordinate with election officials seems to be a direct encouragement toward tech-government censorship collusion. …

San Martín cited the 2020 and 2022 presidential elections in the U.S. and Brazil to claim that “Meta had not done enough to address the potential misuse of its platforms through coordinated campaigns, people organizing, or using bots on the platforms to convey a message to destabilize a country, to create a lack of trust or confidence on electoral processes.” Is this a specific recommendation to violate the First Amendment?

[Maybe. But we’re not helping matters when our elected officials call televised hearings to force apologies out of platform CEOs for *not* moderating its content on the basis of safety. All that does is vindicate these kinds of declarations. — Ed]