NewsGuard is fully a product of a particular era – co-founded in 2018 by Steven Brill, and there to provide “a rating system” for news websites.
Opponents of what NewsGuard, Brill, et al. stand for would say that era unfortunately continues. Critics sum it up as NewsGuard (a browser extension and app) turning censorship into a business model, with a clear political bias, while working with governments, intelligence communities, and corporations.
“Anti-misinformation” and “brand safety rating for advertisers” is the business NewsGuard insists it’s in, and just this week Brill had the opportunity to speak for C-SPAN and rail against anything from a lack of internet gatekeepers deciding who can become a publisher, to branding as “dangerous” people’s right to express different opinions on issues like health and election results.
Brill appears to like the idea of the internet providing unprecedented reach (and therefore influence) – but only when that power of publishing online is to his liking.
“Someone who has a crazy opinion about the Covid vaccine can reach as many people as Dr. Fauci can,” Brill lamented, as he and the C-SPAN host agreed about the need for internet gatekeepers who would decide who can, and must not, be allowed to become an online publisher.
Other statements made by Brill reek of elitism, and why wouldn’t they – his company counts former CIA, NATO, and DHS chiefs among its advisers.
And so Brill doesn’t like it at all that on the internet, (theoretically at least) everyone has the same chance to express opinion and be heard. That’s “dangerous,” he claims, using the issue of health-related information and expertise to “soften the blow” of the very idea that free speech represents danger.
People in a democracy having misgivings about an election process and expressing that doesn’t sit well with Brill, who seems to suggest that whatever is served as fact to the masses should just be consumed that way, no questions asked.
And then there’s Elon Musk, and, basically – what to do about him.
How about blaming Section 230 because of the protections it provides to online platforms?
Brill does, but curiously, mention only X and Musk in a negative context, despite the fact there are much bigger and more powerful companies that benefit from the same rules – the only difference being that they censor content, instead of exposing censorship.
