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As Revolver reported in its now classic piece, any attempt by Elon Musk to allow free speech on Twitter would be met by tremendous resistance from multiple powerful stakeholders in the status quo of regime censorship. The disgraced former head of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Yoel Roth recommended that Apple and Google use their leverage over App Store distribution to punish Elon’s Twitter. For a while, it looked like this “nuclear option” was a live possibility:

We explained in an earlier piece just how damaging it would be to Twitter if Apple were to exercise this nuclear option:

For all but a tiny minority of tech-savvy consumers, the App Store is the only way to add new software to an iPhone. And iPhones make up more than 50 percent of all smartphone sales in the U.S., meaning that with the push of a button, Apple could block half the country from downloading and using Twitter’s app. Since over 85 percent of all Twitter use is on mobile devices, an app store ban for Twitter would essentially be a killshot for the entire platform — just like it was for Parler, which has never recovered from the merely temporary store ban it received after January 6.

READ THE REST: Eric Holder’s Partisan Fingerprints Were All Over Apple’s “Trust and Safety” Department During 2020 Election

For the time being, at least, this effort may have failed. Musk tweeted about a meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook, and indicated there was no danger of Twitter being purged. That’s great news. But Musk, and all supporters of free speech, should remain deeply wary of Apple, both due to its immense power and because of many years of evidence of a political agenda burrowed deep into the company.

 

Senator Marsha Blackburn claims to have the legislative fix: the Open App Markets Act, an antitrust law which prevents dominant app stores from discriminating against apps.

This sounds great in theory, but as Revolver and others have pointed out, the bill had a major loophole allowing app stores to engage in political censorship under the pretext of  “privacy, security, or digital safety.”

Neither loophole actually defines what “safety” is, but the word is already well-established in the tech world as a euphemism for “censorship.” YouTube’s calls its content moderation division YouTube Trust and Safety; Twitter’s moderation advisory group is the Twitter Trust and Safety Council; the World Economic Forum’s initiative to increase digital censorship is titled Advancing Global Digital Content Safety; in the U.K., Boris Johnson’s new bill to combat “disinformation and misinformation” online is called the Online Safety Bill. When Apple banned Parler after January 6, it was to stop “threats to people’s safety.” When Amazon followed behind and kicked Parler off Amazon Web Services, it was because the company “poses a very real risk to public safety.”

READ THE REST: Anti-Big Tech Legislation Has a Free-Speech Poison Pill

Now more than ever, the censorious behavior of former Twitter head of Trust and Safety underscores how “safety” is a go to euphemism for the tech world for “censorship.” Perhaps on account of the increased public understanding of “Safety” as a buzzword for censorship, and perhaps on account of our own reporting, Senator Marsha Blackburn’s new version of the Open App Markets Act has removed the “digital safety” language that appeared to serve as a custom made backdoor for continued censorship. Breitbart’s Allum Bokahri recently penned a piece celebrating this seemingly optimistic change:

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has secured another win for conservatives on tech policy, removing a loophole from a bill designed to regulate the app marketplaces of Apple and Google that would have allowed them to continue to censor in the name of “digital safety,” according to sources familiar with the matter.

The bill, the Open App Markets Act, protects the ability of app developers to “sideload” apps onto iPhones and Android devices, bypassing the chokehold of the two tech giants, who control 99 percent of smartphone operating systems worldwide.

An early version of the bill contained a big loophole: Google and Apple would still have been able to boot apps from their marketplaces if they did so in the name of “digital safety” — a term wide-open to interpretation, that has often been used by Big Tech as a pretext to censor conservatives. Even for non-political apps, Apple and Google’s current systems represent a strangehold on their businesses.

However, a new version of the Open App Markets Act seen by Breitbart News no longer contains the “digital safety” language. Sources familiar with the matter say Sen. Blackburn was responsible for this last-minute change. The new version of the bill is likely to be introduced via the “hotline” procedure in the Senate, meaning it will pass if no Senators object.

[Breitbart]

With all due respect to Breitbart’s Bokhari, who is one of the country’s most courageous and important reporters on censorship, we think the celebration is premature. Blackburn’s modified bill removes one potential censorship loop-hole by taking out the “safety” pretext from the bill, but leaves in other opportunities for censorship that ought to give us pause.

Democrat Senator Blumenthal, who is the primary sponsor of the Open App Markets App bill, gave away the game in penning a letter to the Federal Trade Commission’s Lina Khan shortly after Elon Musk began implementing free speech reforms on Twitter. Blumenthal specifically noted his concern regarding “Twitter’s serious, willful disregard for the safety and security of its users.” This letter makes it clear that if the term “safety” is no longer available in the bill to justify censorship, the term “security,” which remains, will be just as suitable for Blumenthal’s purposes. Leaving the security loophole does little to protect Twitter or other free speech apps. After all, the now infamous Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board was part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Indeed, consider these recent headlines about Twitter’s lack of content moderation:

The Diplomat: Why Elon Musk’s Twitter Purchase Is a National Security Concern

Brookings: Gendered Disinformation is a National Security Problem

Reuters: Hate speech, online extremism fed Pelosi attack, terror experts believe

Rather than play semantic whack-a-mole moving from one censorship pretext to another, a far simpler and more effective fix to the bill in question would be to clarify that nothing in the bill gives Big Tech the right to discriminate against apps for their speech or content moderation policies.

This weekend, Blackburn showed up on Fox News Sunday to promote the Bill and spent most of the time deflecting from the censorship issue to complain about Apple’s failure to condemn Chinese human rights abuses. We’ve seen this type of convenient deflection before from Blackburn:

The ultimate tell that the Blackburn’s language change has no teeth is the fact that Senator Blumenthal is perfectly okay with it. Politico’s morning tech email newsletter reported that Blumenthal was comfortable with the changes specifically because they allow for additional loop holes that could be used to justify the censorship agenda that motivates Blumenthal in the first place:

Where does this leave content moderation? OAMA is meant to break Google and Apple’s stranglehold on the app marketplace by making it easier and more lucrative for third-party developers to offer their apps on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. Critics of the bill, however, warn it would weaken the ability of the two tech giants to remove apps that violate their content moderation policies — a critique that could be strengthened by the latest tweak.

Blumenthal’s office said the bill still allows the companies to set rules around objectionable content and the safety of apps allowed in their app stores. And Sumit Sharma — a senior antitrust researcher at advocacy group Consumer Reports, which backs OAMA — said the deletion of the bill’s “digital safety” provision should not impact content moderation. “Even with this change, Apple and Google can still have the freedom to set the terms and conditions of their own app stores as they see fit,” he said.

If it’s one thing that patriots are tired of, it’s having our elected officials treat us like cheap dates that can be mollified with empty, symbolic, ultimately meaningless “victories.” Free speech online in particular is an area where we need to demand the most from our representatives. So we politely demand that Blackburn return to the drawing board and include explicit protections for speech in the bill. If she’s done her job properly, Blumenthal won’t be smiling when the next version of the bill crosses his desk.