Yes, you can make this stuff up.
But long before you could add your implausible idea to your farfetched script about the weird dystopian future or recent tyrannical past, some big-tech social-media company will have galumphingly implemented that notion.
Former Congressman Ron Paul said the following on Facebook, reprinting a column on his site:
“Last week’s massive social media purges — starting with President Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter and other outlets — were shocking and chilling, particularly to those of us who value free expression and the free exchange of ideas.
“The justifications given for the silencing of wide swaths of public opinion made no sense, and the process was anything but transparent. Nowhere in President Trump’s two ‘offending’ Tweets, for example, was a call for violence expressed explicitly or implicitly. It was a classic example of sentence first, verdict later.”
Then Facebook blocked Dr. Paul.
“With no explanation other than ‘repeatedly going against our community standards,’ Facebook has blocked me from managing my page,” he reported on Twitter, itself no sturdy redoubt. “Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified.”
Can humongous corporations really jerk people around so dishonestly? Is it legal?
Paul further argued that “this assault on social media” is not merely “a liberal or Democrat attack on conservatives and Republicans.”
“As progressives like Glenn Greenwald have pointed out,” explains the doctor, “this is a wider assault on any opinion that veers from the acceptable parameters of the mainstream elite, which is made up of both Democrats and Republicans.”
The narrowing of opinion down to what elites find acceptable is one definition of fascism: a no-opposition-allowed corporatist state.
I’m not making this up.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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