NPR’s Bond: We Don’t Know How Much Government Engages with Tech to Censor, Gov’t Has ‘Really Expanded’ Its Relationship with Tech

On Wednesday’s broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” NPR Correspondent Shannon Bond discussed the lawsuit by Missouri and Louisiana over government pressure on tech companies to censor content on social media and noted that there isn’t much transparency on how much of a relationship there is between government and social media and the ties between government and tech companies have been sharply expanded since 2016 beyond the usual partnerships on things like combatting terrorism or preventing material that sexually abuses children to “voting and vaccines.” She also noted some nations have used social media platforms to silence critics.

Bond said, “There’s actually not a lot of transparency into what those relationships look like. Now, we’ve known for years, there are partnerships, efforts to share information between the government and the platforms for things like fighting terrorism, curbing the spread of child sex abuse material. That’s the important communication that they have, say, with the FBI. Those relationships have really expanded in recent years, especially after 2016, with the Russian efforts to interfere with the presidential election, and then, of course, with the pandemic, the new set of concerns around vaccines and public health. And so, now, you have government officials and agencies working much more closely with companies when it comes to these really kind of critical public issues like voting and vaccines. And it does raise legitimate questions about how close is too close?”

She added that while there are concerns about false information hurting faith in voting and vaccines, “we have seen examples in other countries, like in India and Turkey, where governments have used social media companies sort of as cudgels to muzzle their critics and to hit back at their opposition, to deplatform people.”

Bond also said experts she spoke to fear the injunction in the lawsuit could chill government officials from engaging in any communication with tech platforms.

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett