Social media were supposed to democratize speech, liberating the people of the world from the tyranny of gatekeepers. They failed. Seduced by vanity and ideology, theyve become censors themselves, a Soviet-style thought police.
Once upon a time, Googles motto was Dont be evil, Facebook was all about connecting people, and Twitter executives proclaimed it the free speech wing of the free speech party. Fast-forward to 2020, and theyre all about deplatforming voices the legacy media and the political establishment has denounced as unworthy of being heard.
Who the hell elected you? thundered Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, during Wednesdays hearing, expressing frustration over the platforms crackdown on a story about a major political scandal. In attempting to suppress the story of Hunter Bidens dubious business dealings, Twitter has locked the account of Americas oldest publishing newspaper, and even gone after White House officials and members of Congress.
Yet anyone who didnt see this coming in the months after the 2016 US election simply hasnt been paying attention. The greatest irony is that Cruz and his fellow Republicans enabled it themselves, partly by preferring sound bites over legislative action, but also by validating the Russian meddling conspiracy theories peddled by their political opponents in an effort to delegitimize the presidency of Donald Trump.
Make no mistake, Russiagate is how Big Tech was pushed onto the path of censorship. By way of just one example, the Cambridge Analytica scandal was used to bludgeon Facebook into hiring censors and partnering with outside fact-checkers. When it eventually turned out there had been no scandal and the whole thing was a manufactured outrage by self-serving whistleblowers and the media there wasnt so much as an apology, and the mechanisms stayed in place.
Silicon Valley has been more than eager to go down that path, too. Public records show the vast majority of their employees donate to Democrats, while their executives have poured millions into the campaigns of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden this year.
Nobody needed to pressure Google into embracing the role of the good censor, its executives and employees did so themselves. Not surprisingly, the president of their parent company at the time, Eric Schmidt, had been fully invested in Clintons campaign.
It took a mere suggestion of a crackdown by an influential Senate Democrat for Twitter to ban all RT advertising and overhaul its entire advertising policy, back in October 2017. Not surprisingly, the proposal by Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) went nowhere, but its purpose had been accomplished.
Like the proverbial frog being slowly boiled, the pressure to censor objectionable content steadily rose over the course of the Trump presidency. It marched on regardless of the revelations that Russiagate was a scam and that the real collusion was between the spies, police, prosecutors, media, and the political establishment.
Things almost boiled over when the platforms started deleting any mention of the alleged whistleblower who kick-started the Democrats impeachment proceedings against Trump even those made by Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky).
The Covid-19 pandemic the very next month saw an expansive effort to ban misinformation about the virus meaning anything not coming from authorities, even as those very authorities kept changing their line over time! That was probably when the frog first began noticing the boiling water.
By then, however, Twitter had begun openly censoring Trump this spring. Condemning riots? Glorifying violence,restricted. Putting rioters on notice they cant set up a lawless autonomous zone in Washington, DC? Abusive behavior, threatening harm,restricted.
Oh, granted, the same insane standard was later applied to a metaphorical statement by a self-identified socialist, but whether that was the exception that proves the rule or an effort to both sides the issue, at the end of the day, Twitter had appointed itself arbiter of acceptable speech and that was the point.
How can this happen in a country where free speech is the very first enumerated in the Constitutions Bill of Rights? Because, as both Democrats and libertarian-minded NeverTrump Republicans have been quick to argue, the First Amendment applies only to the government, not to private companies! This is manifestly absurd, but hasnt been challenged in the courts just yet.
This sophistry has enabled the champions of corporate thought-policing to argue that technically, the US doesnt have the kind of censorship of word and thought once attributed to the Soviet Union. Because it has Big Tech, it doesnt have to! Meanwhile, some lawmakers certainly arent shy about demanding for more censorship, either.
If you think the comparisons to the KGB or the Stasi are too much, note Twitters insistence that the New York Post founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801 needs to delete the offending tweet before its account can be unlocked, but it will supposedly be free to repost it then, because the rules have since changed.
In order to truly work, submission must be voluntary. Thats why Americans still file their tax returns, even though the IRS has been withholding taxes from their wages since the Second World War. That is why in George Orwells 1984, Winston Smith couldnt just be broken he had to love Big Brother. That is why Twitter forces you to bend the knee before they will allow you to speak.
What started as anyones ability to compete with the New York Times, Washington Post, or CNN on equal footing has morphed into the neutral platform choosing to promote their non-stories while shutting down legitimate lines of thought and inquiry under the guise of protecting our democracy and fighting (phantom) Russian disinformation.
It didnt have to be this way. It doesnt have to stay this way. But it will take more than just strong words to make speech in America free again.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Link:
Soviet-style thought-policing has come to America, outsourced to Big Tech corporations - RT
