I've been asking for some time why the government doesn't regulate Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, to name the worst. Their censoring of conservative speakers and views has gotten way out of control. When Twitter shuts down the account of the president of the United States, you know they consider themselves to be untouchable.
Because there are only a few of these companies providing social media platforms, it could be argued that they are operating an anti-free market monopoly. Don't we have anti-trust laws concerning that kind of behavior? This is illegal in the United States. Yet the FCC remains strangely silent.
These companies are banning groups and individuals that they don't like or agree with. And worse, they are colluding with each other to de-platform and silence them, not because they are breaking any laws. They do it at the request, spoken or implied, of special interest groups, Federal legislators, the corporate media, intelligence agencies, and deep-pocketed individuals.
That is a pretty good deal for people, organizations, corporations, and government agents to be able to get social media to do what is illegal for them to do. Silence the opposition. Isn't that like the government hiring private contracting mercenaries to destroy villages of people who are in the way of building new structures? James O'Keefe just got banned permanently from Twitter. His sin? Exposing corruption. I thought that was a good thing. Can we clone him?
Since individuals and organizations, exercising a first amendment right of free speech, are able to expose and embarrass, especially whatever party is in power, some of the three-letter agencies, especially, would love to be able to muzzle them. But they are legally prohibited from doing so. However, with the number of investigative journalists, like Michael Hastings and whistleblowers, like Dr. Timothy Cunningham having died under very odd circumstances, I'm not sure the legal restraints always work.
Why would Federal agencies use these social media giants to do their dirty work for them? It's called 'plausible deniability.
This protects the government from exposure to scrutiny while accomplishing its objectives. That will only work for so long. You don't have to be a genius to see that the social media sites censor the same groups and individuals as the Lame Stream Media does. I never see them censor anyone on the left unless they commit the unpardonable sin of sounding like a conservative. OMG!
When Facebook first arrived on the scene, my husband and I were admittedly intrigued and joined. After a week or two of reading silly stuff, I wouldn't even bother putting in a private journal, I was less enthralled. Then I happened to catch a talk show, featuring two FBI guys. They were singing the praises of Facebook for doing most of their work for them. They said they didn't need to work so hard anymore digging up information on people because most users were recording too much information about themselves for the whole world to see. They could hardly believe their good fortune. They just loved Facebook. I wasn't doing anything illegal. But as much money as these guys make, I'll be damned if I was going to volunteer any information to them!
As much as so many people enjoy the convenience and fun of communicating with others on these platforms, they would do well to remember how much these sites work with government agencies and the MSM. These social media sites provide Cloud services to the Department of Defense, paid for how? Our tax dollars being used to, among other things, spy on us.
Many of these social media sites initially told Congress that some of the three-letter agencies were 'requiring' their assistance in collecting information about individuals for them. A little investigative journalism (you remember what our media used to do?) discovered that some of these service providers were competing with each other for the privilege of providing information on customers to the alphabet agencies.
And the best discovery? Google had a contract to assist the Department of Defense in developing artificial intelligence technology. This was called Project Maven. However, Google announced that it would not continue to work on this. But only after thousands of engineers signed a petition pointing out the unethical nature of the work. This ethical stance by the rank and file employees is the only reason Google backed away for the time being.
Anyone who questions the fraudulent 2020 election gets banned from these platforms; too many to even list. Yet they bend over backward for the loony left, BLM and Antifa members, who post some really nasty things about Trump and his supporters. They don't censor or ban permanently pedophile types of comments. That's okay. It's free speech. It's only free if the thought police approve. Would it be too much to ask for us to ban them? There are more conservative platforms coming onboard now who really do honor free speech. That's where I'll be. Let's all learn to vote with our pocketbooks.
