Digest 1/11/2021

The fatal indecision of tech companies, Kamala Harris in Vogue, and more.

OUR TECH OVERLORDS ARE FLAILING

Here’s a chart tracking the action taken by tech platforms in the wake of Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol. The document shows a flurry of decisive action following years of hesitation and half measures: by Thursday, Facebook had indefinitely blocked Trump’s account; YouTube had instituted a harsher policy against accounts spreading misinformation; TikTok had blocked hashtags affiliated with the riots; and Twitch had blocked Trump’s channel. By Friday, Trump’s Twitter account was permanently suspended. The bans came all at once, but the timing is not surprising when you consider how these platforms operate. They tend to take action only after their complacency has led to tragedy: Facebook only banned white nationalist content after the Christchurch massacre, for example, which was livestreamed on the platform. Twitter seems to have been propelled into action, in part, by internal pressure to ban Trump from hundreds of employees.

Twitter’s permanent suspension of Trump’s account follows first labeling his claims as false while leaving the tweets up in a halfhearted effort to tamp down misinformation. Both Twitter and Facebook (which has also banned Trump for the remainder of his term) were already fending off unfounded claims that the platforms censor conservatives, who were fleeing to apps like Parler where extremism could more readily flourish. In the past, tech companies have bent over backwards to appease conservatives, who claim victimhood but dominate large swathes of social media. Now, conservatives will use these bans as evidence of tech companies’ biases and cast them as attempts to restrict free speech.

It’s not just conservatives and conspiracy theorists who share these concerns — these bans are the most visible exercise of tech companies’ power to silence users, due to the prominence of their target and the evisceration not just of Trump’s presence, but of Trumpism. The Twitter accounts of Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and several QAnon promoters have also been suspended. (It should be noted that Twitter has in the past banned left-wing accounts with no explanation.) Some fear a precedent is being set, and that the display of unilateral power by tech companies could bode ill for less powerful citizens. Folks like Glenn Greenwald, of course, are calling it censorship.

I maintain that content moderation by tech platforms is not censorship, but I do not think all concerns about tech companies purging accounts are silly or unfounded. We have seen how the rights of Americans have been infringed in the name of subduing some larger danger, as with the Patriot Act and surveillance programs monitoring Muslims after 9/11. But those were actions taken by the government against its citizens, and a tech company deplatforming someone is hardly comparable. Overall, I think it’s strange to hold up the ban of the most powerful man in the world, who was banned for spreading misinformation that incited a violent insurrection, as evidence of a more general trend towards suppression. 

What I find alarming but utterly predictable about the bans is how obviously they are the result of years of indecision and a lack of conviction about what tech platforms will permit. An earlier tweet from Trump that seemed to threaten violence against Black Lives Matter protesters did not result in a suspension. Tech companies appear to be making decisions about what sort of content is allowed on the fly — Trump’s tweets calling the election into question were permissible, albeit flagged with warnings, until they had already borne some awful real-world consequence. Then they were not. I’m not confident this whack-a-mole approach to rooting out extremism will prevent further violence. When you start with a laissez-faire approach to content and then come to find that such a policy poses real dangers, you are forced to work backwards from those dangers in an attempt to find something resembling a moral compass. The problem is, tech companies don’t have a moral compass, but a bottom line. We’re seeing action now because their bottom line is threatened.

The CEOS of tech companies have used the First Amendment to defend their hands-off approach to moderation, framing their lenience as an extension of broadly accepted principles of free speech. But the reach of these platforms — over a billion users in the case of Facebook, hundreds of millions in the case of Twitter — and the speed and efficiency with which they can be used to spread content or build communities has challenged this approach. With each advancement in tech and media, we are forced to reevaluate the social contract we all thought we had signed, now rendered outdated by some new way of communicating. I also think we have fundamentally misunderstood the role of social media platforms, often presented as some modern-day Greek agora. In reality, they are privately-owned online forums that require content moderation, just like any other.

ABOUT THAT VOGUE COVER

Fashion magazine discourse is at it again! An upcoming February Vogue cover, featuring a tepid image of Kamala Harris in a jacket and low-top Converse, has sparked controversy, with members of Harris’s staff even anonymously voicing disapproval. (A second image of Harris in a powder-blue Michael Kors suit, which the team allegedly preferred, was also released as a digital cover.) The images were shot by Tyler Mitchell, a young Black photographer who came to prominence in 2018 after being chosen by Beyoncé to shoot her cover story for the magazine and who recently captured a very good image of Harry Styles blowing up a balloon in a lace dress and blazer; the sittings editor was Gabriella Karefa-Johnson (who, full disclosure, is a former colleague), an inventive stylist who once perched the actress Zendaya on top of a 12-foot-tall raffia skirt sculpture by artist Simone Leigh for a Garage magazine shoot.

Neither Mitchell nor Karefa-Johnson are by nature producers of tepid fashion photos. So what happened? My suspicion is that recent controversies over Democratic politicians wearing expensive clothing in magazines (which, to be clear, they don’t own!!) have made their teams leery of the normal process of a fashion shoot, in which stylists are given freedom to dress subjects in fantastical, often impractical designer clothing to express a narrative or idea. The Harris images, to me, have the sense of excessive workshopping — Michael Kors and Converse are not likely to alienate anyone, but they’re not exactly exciting, either — and indicates a very convoluted relationship between politics and aesthetics, in which fashion photos of public figures are assessed by so many competing rubrics that it’s nearly impossible to strike the right note. — Erin Schwartz

COMINGS AND GOINGS

— Lindsay Peoples Wagner is leaving her position as editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue to take over the same role at The Cut. The top editor job at The Cut was occupied by Stella Bugbee until October, when she stepped down to become an editor-at-large for New York Magazine. 

— Some more job changes at New York Magazine: Strategist editor Alexis Swerdloff has been promoted to deputy editor at New York Magazine, and David Wallace-Wells is going from the magazine’s deputy editor to editor-at-large. 

EVERYTHING ELSE

— Fox News is replacing one of its only hours of nighttime news with yet another opinion segment. So more fear-mongering and more misinformation. Hey, it’s what the viewers want. 

— Here’s some delightful media gossip for you: Matthew Yglesias, who could recently be found arguing for the delay of COVID relief checks until “more stuff will be open,” apparently refused to do his own dishes while at Vox, arguing it was more economical for the office assistant to do it for him due to the difference in their pay.

— Travel + Leisure has been acquired by Wyndham Destinations, an offshoot of parent company Wyndham Hotels that operates timeshares and vacation rentals. The deal was reportedly $100 million cash, to be paid over four years. Advertorial is the future?

— If you think for a second E! would leave the Capitol riot alone, deeming it outside their beat as a celebrity content farm, I am pleased to report you are MISTAKEN. Here they are overlaying images from the riot with quotes from celebrities. I personally love the Jane Lynch addition: “What in God’s name,” Lynch opines. “How in God’s name.”