Another blow to free speech | WORLD – WORLD News Group

Some members of Congress apparently think that Facebook, Twitter,and other social media giants are still not doing enough to censor the politicalviews of conservatives on their platforms.

Speaker Nancy Pelosis House committee investigating the eventsat the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has issuedsubpoenas to Twitter, Meta (Facebook), YouTube, Alphabet (Google), andReddit to consider whether the platforms were promoting domestic terrorism.

The tech companies are already facing lawsuits and widespread customer backlash for the one-sided silencing of politicalspeech.

In the most famous example, Twitter canceled the account of @RealDonaldTrump, then the sitting presidentof the United States, for violating its community standards. Twitter then canceled numerous other accounts and purged many followers because an algorithm determined theywere likely Russianbots.More recently, Twitter permanently removed the account of U.S. Rep. Marjorie TaylorGreen, R-Ga.

Twitter is not alone in this respect: YouTube has taken downvideos of U.S. Sens. RonJohnson and RandPaul,the latter for saying what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now admitsis trueconcerning the efficacy of cloth masks in fighting the spread of COVID.

And we know from admissions made from the podiumof the White House press room that the Biden administration is conspiring withthe social media platforms to remove so-called health disinformation. My law firmrepresents a Twitter and Facebook user who was suspendedby both platforms for posting peer-reviewed social science about the masking ofchildren at the same time the White House and surgeon general launched a coordinatedcampaign against so-called health disinformation.

Whether the topic was ballot integrity in the 2020 elections,information about COVID-19, or the events of Jan. 6, the social media platformswere on the prowl for disfavored opinions.

And yet apparently, all of that is not enough. Revoking or suspendinguser accounts, removing individual posts or video content, requiring disclaimers,and imposing accompanying links to accurate information still does not cut itas far as congressional Democrats are concerned.

Because lets be real: These subpoenas are not about gathering informationtheir purpose is intimidation. Few things send a shudder down the spine of a corporate executive at a publicly traded company like a congressional subpoena. We all know where this is headed: a front-page photo of new Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Facebooks Mark Zuckerburg taking an oathbefore a congressional committee.

In advance of fulfilling the subpoena and testifying, the pressure from the CEOs office to corporate underlings will be intense: Give me everything weve got where weve taken steps to shut down extremist speech. Lets turn over a thousand pages documenting everything weve done. But who defines extremist?

But it will not stop there. The corollary will be equally obvious: We need to do more. I need to announce something. Lets rewrite the algorithms, lets commission more volunteer monitors, lets hire more in-house censorsgive me something to give the committee.

And so, in the name of combatting domestic terrorism, the already woke scions of Silicon Valley will censor even more speech.

Domestic terrorism is a real threatwe were reminded of that vividly a few weeks ago when an Islamic terrorist held hostagesat a Jewish synagogue in Texas. And those who broke the law on Jan. 6 deserve the full measure of justice for their violation of Americas temple of democracy.

But Speaker Pelosi and her hand-picked and one-sided Jan. 6 committee are making the most of the old Rahm Emmanuel adage, Never let a good crisis go to waste.

Under the glaring bright lights of a congressional room, the social media platforms will take the hint to do more to combat domestic terrorism, defined by the left as any speech on the right deemed unacceptable. These same platforms seem to think that no speech to the left is ever too extreme.

When Congress enacted Section 230, the law that provides liability protection for platforms that remove content, it said its purposes included ensuring the internet offer[s] a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.

How far Congress has fallen from that noble aspiration.

Editors note: Daniel Suhrs law firm, the Liberty Justice Center, represents Justin Hart in a lawsuit challenging Twitter and Facebooks suspension of his social media accounts.

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Another blow to free speech | WORLD - WORLD News Group