Big Tech social media companies that once boasted of providing open forums now routinely ban speech that they disagree with — speech about elections, pandemics, Wuhan labs, or what have you.
How much of this suppression is private and independently initiated? How much is imposed at the behest of government officials who are supposed to respect First Amendment rights?
Government officials not only say that people should not say such-and-such; they also, increasingly, either complain that social media companies don’t do enough to gag people or herald the extent to which they do so.
Earlier this year, Reuters reported that “the White House has been reaching out to social media companies including Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Inc’s Google about clamping down on COVID misinformation. . . .”
Now the American Freedom Law Center is suing Twitter and President Biden so that the question of whether the government is in effect “deputizing” private organizations to assault freedom of speech can be adjudicated.
The Center is filing on behalf of Colleen Huber, a doctor Twitter censored and suspended for saying the wrong thing about COVID-19. Of course, there are many other victims of the same policy, and it the Center seeking class-action status for the lawsuit.
The government has been enlisting social-media moguls as foot soldiers in a propaganda war. Whether this is done openly or behind closed doors, this war on free speech violates the Constitution.
As we must hope the outcome of this legal action affirms.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Twitter declared a free and open Internet to be “an essential human right in modern society” Saturday morning after the Nigerian government banned access to the social media giant following a dispute with its president.
Sounds like Trump should sue Twitter for its human rights violations.
Twitter has been the worst it seems. I love a lawsuit on their hypocrisy.
To the extent the government is encouraging censorship it is, in my opinion, violating the Constitution.
Interestingly, in the recent incidences, the government’s favored positions may well be shortly proven to have been wrong and perhaps, just perhaps, some of the platforms will learn.
Good point. Let’s hope.
Lies are not needed.
OK Pam, who is lying?
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Even Fauci admitted that HCQ worked on coronaviruses way back in 2005.
Because a corporation is a creature of the State, it has only the attributes acquired by heredity from its parent. That is, it can have only those powers that were endowed to the State by the State’s creators, viz.: the people of the State. Conversely, any powers that were withheld from the State by the people cannot have been passed on to the corporation.
A wide variety of powers were withheld from the States and from the federal government that, via Congress, creates new states. Most of us are familiar with the Bill of Rights — which probably should have been called ‘The Bill of Prohibitions’ since it mostly lists things the federal government (and, by extension, States) are forbidden to do; things like: interfere with the free expression of peoples’ opinions, discriminate among customers based on their exercise of rights retained by real people, &c.
So, if a State is forbidden to discriminate among its customers (i.e.: citizens), how can a corporation, a creature of that State, have such a power? If a State is forbidden to block the free exercise of expression by its citizens, how can a corporation, a creature of that State, have such a power? The answer is that a corporation cannot and does not have any such power. Doing such acts is a violation of the corporate charter. The proper remedy for a corporation that violates its charter is for the State to withdraw the charter, killing the corporation.