Beware of Regime-Approved Whistleblowers
A real whistleblower takes real risks and opposes corruption at the top, rather than aligning with those at the top to usher in a more perfect form of surveillance capitalism.
By Christopher Roach
October 10, 2021
Ritual humiliation of social media companies is becoming something of a tradition. Most typically, social media CEOs are hauled before Congress, harangued for a day, promise to “do better,” and then go back to business as usual.
Last week a new kind of social media witness appeared: a whistleblower. Frances Haugen emerged with a great deal of fanfare, complete with a public relations firm, a verified account on Twitter, and a fawning entourage, including members of the press and Congress. But instead of denouncing social media for its excessive power, wealth, and hostility to traditional American values, Haugen pleaded for regulations that happen to align with the peculiar values and interests of Silicon Valley.
She denounced free speech on the platform as a threat to democracy and lamented Facebook’s disbanding of its civil Integrity team, which was the key to Facebook’s recent meddling in American elections. While some of her criticisms were designed to appeal to normal people with normal sensibilities—such as exposing Facebook’s shockingly frank willingness to create algorithms to track and engage children—the bulk of her agenda was not so different from the preferences of social media leaders.
Namely, she wants social media to act as a gatekeeper and curator of content, much like the legacy media did before the internet was created. In an age of partisan and shockingly dishonest mainstream institutions, many people have lost all confidence in centralized control.
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https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/10/beware-of-regime-approved-whistleblowers/
