When a purported Antifa group tweeted an “alert” on Sunday, instructing “Comrades” to “move into residential areas … the white hoods … and we take what’s ours,” tagging it “#BlacklivesMaters #F**kAmerica,” Twitter closed the account.
Few would object.
That was criminal incitement to riot, and worse.
But when Twitter, Facebook and YouTube remove client content for arguing things about the coronavirus that does not fit with government bodies’ officially approved information, something else is going on.
Last week, President Donald Trump warned of the dangers to election integrity of switching to mail-in ballots. So Twitter flagged his tweet, implying it as non-factual.*
I am not going to defend the wisdom or legality of Trump’s threats — on Twitter or by executive order. But one characterization of the whole affair by Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason seems a . . . bit . . . off.
“The order relies heavily on conservatives’ victimhood conspiracy du jour: that social media companies are colluding to suppress conservative voices,” Ms. Brown wrote last Thursday. “It’s an objectively untrue viewpoint, as countless booted and suspended liberal, libertarian, and apolitical accounts can tell you.”
The fact that non-conservatives have been de-platformed does not actually work against the supposition that the social media outfits are colluding against conservatives. It remains a problem if conservative thought is suppressed along with libertarian and anything else heterodox. These companies do conspire to suppress opinions they do not like, and influencers they regard as dangerous.
To center-left establishment opinion.
These social media behemoths aim to defend their approved news and opinion against what they regard as “fake news.” Thereby suppressing free debate and inquiry.
Opposing Trump’s reaction does not require pretending that these companies’ policies are not deeply problematic.
Concern about open and robust debate is not a mere “victimhood conspiracy du jour.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* How a prediction can be a factual matter is a bit odd. But let that slide, I guess.
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