Jennifer Sey, once a competitive gymnast on the U.S. Women’s Olympic team, has launched a new clothing line focused on the threat to women’s sports by the woke-driven incursion of “transitioned” or “transitioning” biological males.
TikTok responded to her ad on that platform by banning he company from advertising with this:
The only thing that could possibly be called offensive about the XX-XY ad is that the “right” people disagree with it. So Sey must be punished.
This is the oppressive national culture being constructed right now by the political party that says it is saving democracy from Donald Trump. According to some recent polls that show voters concerned about “democratic values”moving Bidenward, this cynical, gaslighting tactic is working—at least on morons, who make up a significant proportion of the electorate, as you know.
Finding this kind of censorship unethical and intolerable should not be a partisan or ideological decision. Banning a Target, Disney or Bud Light ad extolling the wonder of trans athletes as “offensive” would be equally wrong.
If this doesn’t worry you, you are oddly impervious to the sensation of shackles slowly tightening around you and your liberties.
Incidentally, if Sey thinks a professional ethicist can be of any assistance in her battles, I hereby offer my services pro bono. If I can find an address for her online, I’ll make that offer directly.
Ethics Alarms 
I like the ad, and I wouldn’t censor it. BUT–as you know, this is not a threat to democracy. It’s a private company exercising ITS first amendment rights to have only the speech it prefers on its website/app. If you don’t like it, go use another one. Put market pressure on TikTok, and win. But don’t make it about the national culture. And certainly not about democracy.
Or–alternatively–do what several leftists advocate, and begin to treat social media platforms, when they get large enough, as utilities, subject to far stricter regulation than media companies.
Those seem to me the two viable alternatives–our traditional media approach applied to new technologies OR a legal redefinition of those platforms.
And there is a VERY strong case to be made that Trump is a threat to democracy. I encourage everyone to listen to this amazing episode of This American Life.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/833/come-retribution
This is only one aspect of the multi-faceted threat that he represents, but it is an important one.
Promoting anything by the Lincoln project and anti trumper Jonathan Karl while simultaneously not including actual interviews with Trump in which he is asked directly about retribution where he says it ( retribution) has to stop is more gaslighting. Every interview is by an anti-Trumper except perhaps Grisham who is just another government toady who believes jumping ship will protect her ability to stay in the good graces of the Federal glitterati.
If working to convict your opposition by distorting laws and using Party operatives at the state levels to get your opposition off the ballots are promoting democracy by eliminating a available choice then I don’t give a shit about preserving such rot.
“Promoting anything by the Lincoln project and anti trumper Jonathan Karl while simultaneously not including actual interviews with Trump in which he is asked directly about retribution where he says it ( retribution) has to stop is more gaslighting.”
No, it isn’t. But bringing up interviews where Trump has pretended to be against retribution, and ignoring statements he has made directly to his supporters saying “I am your retribution!” is.
Unless, as we’ve seen happen so often, this private company is being pressured by government entities to censor certain content. In a prior age, I’d have been content to shelve such a concern until evidence had been shown it was indeed happening. But we’ve seen enough such cases by now to know that such pressure was (and apparently remains) a widespread practice, and I would no longer assume any tech company’s editorial stance is free of government influence.
“This American Life?” Surely, you jest. Ira Glass? They produce content that gets aired on NPR? THAT American Life? Hahahahahahaha.
It should be called “This Soviet Life.” Much as “Democracy Now” should be called “Communism Now.”
Countering the likes of Ira Glass and his show is what the Trump phenomenon is all about. Wake up!
I actually think This American Life has great journalism. Give this piece a listen–it’s worth your time.
“enough cases”–I know of one–that the government informed social media outlets that the Hunter Biden laptop story resembled stories that had been known by US intel to be boosted by Russian outlets, and in fact WAS being boosted by Russian outlets (Twitter Bots, RT, fake social media accounts). The Russians did this here throughout 2015-6, in the French election, in Brexit, in the German elections, and many others. It’s a remarkably efficient way to inject your messaging into a democracy. We learned a lot by how the French handled their own intervention. As it happens, the laptop story had elements of falsehood to it, and much that was true (it seems that some of the data from the laptop was tampered with, and the remainder was legit, although so far, none shows any crime by the “Biden crime family” just pathetic drug and sex crimes by Hunter.). But maybe I don’t follow this issue as closely as you do–are there other cases where social media has been warned by the US government about content? Is that what happened on Covid? I think it is a tough line to manage–we definitely don’t want dangerously flawed public health information being promulgated during a pandemic–but we also want free speech. I’m okay with the government passing along the best information available to social media companies, and letting them make independent policy decisions about it, so long as there is no punishment for the media companies who go against government advice.
I’m sorry, but at this point you’re bordering on willful blindness. The FBI has authenticated the laptop and entered its contents into evidence in a federal trial. It’s long past time to stop pretending it’s Russian disinformation. A treasure trove of e-mails have now been leaked, including the famous Twitter Files, that show that the government’s influence on social media has not been limited to a few isolated incidents.
And no, this hasn’t just been the government “passing along the best information available”. Were you not around when Congress was calling social media executives before Congressional committees, grilling them on the “spread of misinformation”, and threatening them with adverse regulation? I was. Did you fail to notice how the SEC and FTC launched “investigations” into Elon Musk pretty much immediately after he took over Twitter and declared a change in editorial policy? I didn’t.
It may be blindness, but it’s not willful. There is a great deal of epistemic tribalism at work amidst polarization. Things that are ABSOLUTELY FACTUALLY true on one side are MADNESS CONSPIRACY THEORIES on the other. Example: I know some smart people who don’t think Trump was trying to enact a coup and overturn a legitimate election on January 6th. Crazy, insane, bullshit to believe in, but smart people who breathe air believe it. 🙂
I don’t contest the fact that it IS Hunter’s laptop. Nor that its contents contain evidence of crimes (Hunter’s, so far). Something can be partially or wholly true and still wildly misinterpreted AND boosted by Russian intelligence. What I do contest is that the version of it being shopped around by Rudy had not been tampered with. AND–I don’t blame the media for behaving with caution because they got burned before. Remember Bush’s military papers? CBS ran too quickly with that, and got burned. Even Wikileaks, which was unquestionably being used by the Russians, with their late breaking document dump on THE DAY that Trump’s Access Hollywood story dropped, turned out to be…nothing. Standard party activities were made to seem sinister… Similar late breaking scandal happened in the French elections, boosted, as the laptop story was, by Russian linked media.
I don’t see any evidence that the Musk investigations were linked to his ownership of twitter. I’m open to the idea, but let’s see what evidence emerges.
As for the Twitter files and Congressional investigations of social media–it seems some people here AGREE that social media needs to be regulated differently from old media. How do you do that without holding hearings and talking to the executives? The SG now says that social media should come with a warning label. I’ll post separately to explain one outcome.
I don’t know if this is a reason to regulate social media, but it is an example of why they are so different and troubling. I think they are a big cause of the polarization that we see here at EA and across the country. I think about my dad and his brother, my uncle. Even though my uncle was 7 years older, they were very close by the time I showed up. I grew up seeing my uncle about 1-2 a year. And as I got older, I noticed my dad and his brother joshed a lot about politics. My uncle was hard core Republican from suburban Pittsburgh, an executive in manufacturing. My dad was a solid Democrat working in military intelligence and the AF reserves. It was fun to see them josh. My uncle would say “Kid, your dad thinks I’m a Republican because I’m rich. What he doesn’t understand is I’m rich because I’m a Republican!” By my father’s death, they were still close. BUT–neither was active on FB. They were just too old, missed the wave. If they had been…and lived through the Obama and Trump years…every day, my dad would have had to see my uncle defend Trump, excuse Trump. My uncle would have had to see my Dad support BLM. And mask requirements. Social media takes family and old friends and monthly weekly daily confronts them with major and minor disagreements. AND–the algorithm makers KNOW that conflict engages more than peace. Look at this debate we are having here! You or I could be doing something useful, uplifting in our lives–instead, we are debating the degree of Russian involvement in Social Media disinformation, or how much government influence has been used on social media content. Why? To what end? Beyond the waste of time, though, social media is segregating us into tribes of polarized haters, who don’t even agree on basic facts any more. It’s not the ONLY driver of it–the rise of partisan biased outlets like Fox (and yes, eventually MSNBC) plays a role, campaign finance, gerrymandering, etc etc–also modernity itself, since this is a global phenom, a US-centric explanation cannot be complete. All of which is to say–if politicians aren’t worried about social media, they aren’t doing their jobs. They may be doing the wrong things (I’m no expert) but it’s tearing the country apart with bile and bullshit–FOR PROFIT.
Lots of perceptive and useful observations here, Jerry. Thanks. Comment of the Day.
Very kind of you to say. The question remains–what in the hell can be done about the social media box now that Pandora has opened it? it is far from all bad–I’m sure it has reduced loneliness for some, even as it vastly increased it for others (more bad than good on that metric, but not ALL bad). It allows the world to quickly and emphatically register sympathy in a way that was impossible/difficult before, by getting direct messages from people in crisis out. It connects people with rare passions and interests across great distances. It provides us all with a way to catalog and track our personal histories (but as Nietzsche warned us, although he was talking about national cultures, the weight of history can become a burden in itself, and I think it’s also true for individuals). Still, my FB since 2008 is as close as I’ve ever come to a diary. Big trips. Funny things with my son. Reunions with family. Political events that touched me (and long long long debates that I reread now and go WTF Why).
But most pressingly–Social media is a big part of the hatred that is destroying our institutions from within. I don’t have a clue on how to regulate our way out of that, nor do I see a cultural trend that would fight it without government. Education is the progressives’ go to response when all else fails–but what do you teach kids about social media that would reduce polarization? I’m flummoxed.
Not surprisingly, I agreed with your post on the Louisiana Ten Commandments, and I hope you’re right about the high court’s response.
“A treasure trove of e-mails have now been leaked, including the famous Twitter Files, that show that the government’s influence on social media has not been limited to a few isolated incidents.”
The Twitter Files showed that the Trump administration was making requests for Twitter to take down content at the same time the Biden campaign was.
Somehow, people who say they’re concerned with “the government’s influence on social media” focused a lot more outrage on the latter than the former. (Of course, when they say “the government,” they mean Democrats.)
Without getting to the Trump lane shift here, I must emphasize that this kind of censorship—not government censorship, but still censorship, is extremely undemocratic. There is a distinction between undemocratic and unconstitutional. The latter is unethical and illegal; the former is legal but damaging to the proper functioning of a democracy, which is the civic duty of every citizen to mains\tain and protect:
—it is undemocratic for me to ban and positive discussion of Robert Kennedy Jr. during my dinner parties.
—it is undemocratic for me require commenters to agree with my assessment of the Democratic Party’s ominous totalitarian bent
—it is undemocratic for my local seafood restaurant to condition service on my declared fealty to Black Lives Matter
—it is undemocratic for the Washington Post to publish only letters supportive of its resident hacks, like Phillip Bump
—it is undemocratic…well, I could go on forever. None of these are forbidden in the Constitution or in law, but they all are devastating to democracy, which must depend on free-flowing ideas and the ability to communicate them and allow others to ponder their legitimacy.
But the kind of one-way advocacy and lock-step ideological censorship practice by a social media platform is far worse—or unethical, less excusable, more dangerous and intolerable, than any of these. Twitter was withing its rights to ban Trump, but it was undemocratic in teh extreme. Facebook banned Ethics Alarms because I linked to an essay about the kind of black-face that isn’t racist (Fred Astaire’s homage to his teachers, John Bubbles and Bill Robinson)—heaven forbid that anyone might learn something that undercuts meat-axe political correctness. Social media censorship was used to slant the playing field for Joe Biden in 2020 (Laptop? What laptop?), and the entire phenomenon is one that exists with a huge hole in jurisprudence—not the press, not quite the same as private enterprise. If social media only permits certain views and opinions, that is obviously an effort to undermined civic discourse, public awareness, and democracy. How could it be otherwise? Simple Kant 101 proves the point: what if every social media provider and platform banned any advocacy for a particular candidate and his positions? (and if this administration had its way, that is exactly what we would be seeing.)
The other trolling commenter I banned at the same time as “Dave” just sent in a spam comment with this previously seen complaint: “If censorship is such an anathema to you, why do you regularly ban people who you disagree with?
Shouldn’t you follow the ideals you put forth in this post? Or are you only allowed to ban ideas you don’t wish to promote, but other companies can’t?”
This “gotcha!” attempt embodies the same level of critical thought the individual’s comments displayed. People get banned here for not following the Comment policies, which are in a link right on the home page. I can think of only one class of commenter which I have banned because of the substantive content of their comments, if you can call straight-up racist rhetoric “substantive”: these were visitors from the white supremacy, anti-black hate site “Chimpmania.” A civil, intelligent ethics-interested commenter is always welcome here regardless of his or her positions.
I want my 60 minutes (or whatever it was) back. THAT was your “very strong case” that Trump is a threat to democracy. The hyperbolic paranoid whining of two or three ex Trump associates about their fears that his metaphorical reference to himself as as his fans’ “retribution” means he’ll hunt them down after the election? (Well, one did see a strange truck in front of his house once or twice.) Fretting about how they need to arm themselves and plan their escape from the country in case things don’t go their way in November? All presented in the best low NPR monotone signaling “This is how we let you know how serious this really is”.
Not that they speak for him, but never mind that every Trump supporter they spoke to calmly opined that Trump wouldn’t, and shouldn’t, do do anything like that, but would probably try to fix the mess Biden & Co. has made of the country and maybe even pardon him, if necessary.
Did anyone else bother to lister to the TAL bit?
Thanks for giving it a listen. So you don’t think the Trump quotes they use mean anything? You don’t think his adoption of rhetoric like “The Biden Crime Family” should be taken at all seriously? His statements, over and over, threatening to prosecute his political opponents? The testimony of Republicans who worked in the Trump White House that he, over and over, pressured his AGs to prosecute his political opponents, and was resisted by the DOJ? None of that means anything?
I didn’t take notes. I do remember they made a big deal over his “retribution” metaphor. But we know Trump is a sloppy speaker, and his musings or the points behind them often deliberately misrepresented…”drink bleach”, “very fine people” …
Many would agree “The Biden Crime Family” is an apt descriptor of a life-long politician who enables his unqualified crackhead son in selling access and influence, and act as the bagman to funnel Ukrainian, Russian and Chinese money into family shell corporations.
If, and/or how much, Trump pressured his AGs is largely hearsay from the same disgruntled lot. If true, he must not have pursued such ideas with any particular vigor, as nothing seems to have come of it past his presumed questions or suggestions. Pretty sure he didn’t get his AG’s third in command sent to join a red-state Republican prosecutor to cobble together a felony charge against his democrat opponent over some disputed bookkeeping. I hope he would have had his guy send authorities to stop illegal threatening and harassment of the leftist SCOTUS justices if that had happened during his term.
There is no evidence of Biden being involved in any illegality with his son’s influence peddling. It is common, among both Dems and Rs to have children who trade on their names. There are legal limits to what they can do. If Hunter or Joe Biden crossed those lines, they should be held fully accountable, as should Trump’s children. If you compare the sums that Kushner got from Saudi to everything that Hunter got from China, Ukraine, etc…it’s fractional. We don’t know if either offspring crossed the line.
Similarly–there is NO evidence of any impropriety involved in the prosecutor who left DOJ and joined the NY office. Allegation does not mean evidence.
I have seen no evidence, either, and no one else has either, that either federal prosecution involved any improper contact between the WH and the DOJ. There were multiple accounts by many people of such efforts during Trump’s first term. He repeatedly requested of Sessions that Comey be prosecuted. Sessions, ethically, refused. One reason to be worried about Trump’s second term is that the ethical people who held the line against his mad, unconstitutional or desperately stupid whims are not likely to be there.
Final point–the multiple prosecutions of Trump are unprecedented. Republicans believe this is because of twisted justice and bias at DOJ and by local prosecutors. Democrats believe it is because of the unprecedented nature of Trump. Consider–he’s already been found civilly guilty of fraud–first at Trump University, second in his handling of his own charity, and third by the civil case involving real estate valuations. Prior to the presidency, he was involved in thousands of civil litigations (very unusually high number for a billionaire or a real estate developer). Biographies written LONG before he ever got into politics talked about how he skirted the law, cheated his employees and contractors, and just defied the law whenever he could. If you think Trump is not guilty of massive tax cheating over decades, we’ve been reading very different stuff (and again, the tax cheating began LONG before 2015). The Founders, particularly Washington, warned us about following leaders of low character who would use demagoguery against the Republic. I think Joe Biden is your standard politician of the last 50 years. He’s a Romney/McCain/Kaine/Kerry type guy. He’s no Jimmy Carter, he’s no Reagan, he’s middling in most respects. Trump, however, stands out for his absolute lack of respect for the rule of law, his lack of understanding of how the constitutional order works, and his overall lack of impulse control.
Is it worth mentioning that literally dozens of comments, all of them relevant, are determined by erstwhile-Twitter to be “probable spam”? Most, but not all, of these comments are supportive of Sey. It’s difficult to say with confidence that these determinations are content-based (“we’ll call it ‘probable spam’ if we don’t like what you say”), but there does seem to be some evidence of that.
That seems to be a very recent development on TwtteX, and often appears before random tweets that don’t look like they have any attributes that would be considered “spam” as the term is generally understood. My guess, until I encounter more evidence, is that it’s a new filter that’s not well-calibrated yet.
Interesting. Sey is not your prototypical conservative, if she is a conservative at all.
She got forced out as brand president of Levi’s because she had the gall to speak up and say that San Francisco children should be back in school and that the extended school shutdowns were wrong.
That issue and this issue of girls and women’s sports should be a rallying point for all sorts of people. They really should be issues on which right and left can agree, one would think.
The idea that feminists are willing to let men tell them who can or cannot be a woman is more than a little disturbing.
Diego wrote, “The idea that feminists are willing to let men tell them who can or cannot be a woman is more than a little disturbing.”
Agreed. I find it mind boggling that the Gloria Steinems of the world are silent on this, and the Steinems have not defended the likes of JK Rowling and Riley Gaines.
jvb
I agree. I know of one prominent woman in the arts who was a first generation feminist, and said, privately, that sometimes in feminist activist meetings now, the discussion can be dominated by MTF transexuals, and she’s like “wow, White men finally found a way to take over our feminist meetings” as previously, they had been all female. Strange times, strange bedfellows. There are some traditional feminists who are privately ambivalent at the least about transgenderism.
TikTok is notoriously hostile to conservatives, conservative content, conservative businesses. I follow content creators who are on their 4th and 5th account. They’ll amass over 1 million followers only to be banned with no explanation. They then have to start all over in the hopes that the algorithm will bring them back around to the followers they had before and rebuild one follower at a time.
Meanwhile I’ve seen woke, leftist creators use violent language, make threats against other creators, encourage minors to reach out to them off-site, with zero consequence.
Doesn’t surprise me a bit that she and her ad were banned.