Big Brother's Buddies

In the United States the government does not, at any level,
censor speech; the spoken word, the printed word, musical
productions, prayers in houses of worship --- nor should it.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits
this restrictive, chilling practice. That said, the keen-on-regulating
-every-aspect-of-American-life Democrats are leaving one area
of life in our country to their patrons and allies in Silicon Valley,
that being our freedom of speech. How so? Some social web sites,
Facebook being but one, are policing the content of political ads
placed by politicians as well as online political discussion groups
(Tea Party groups have long been a favorite target). They have
warned said parties about posting material that supposedly violates
the site's "Community standards" which are supposed to protect
certain users of these sites from speech which would prove "hurtful",
could possibly "trigger" certain emotional reactions in said users,
"hateful", and basically politically incorrect. If this sounds familiar
to you, my grand readers, it is because you have read articles about
colleges and universities employing such tactics against conservative
voices on their campuses. Here, the Left is taking it all to a bigger
scope.

Facebook's vice president of global affairs and communications
Nick Clegg recently stated that Facebook does not believe that its
role is to "prevent a politician's speech from reaching its audience
and being subject to public debate and scrutiny." Oh, really?
Facebook has faced heavy criticism for content suppression,
and rightfully so. Either conservative's FB pages were shut down
or they were "shadow banned", meaning those that have these pages
can still post on them, although nobody but them can see what they
post. Twitter, Google, and some other social media sites use such
tactics against conservatives as well.

Now, as private companies the aforementioned firms can set these
policies as they see fit. But some in the legal field declare that
since many people, millions in fact, post on these pages found on
these companies' web sites, these sites are no longer considered
to be private places whose rules can be established by its owners
but public meeting places, albeit online, meaning they they enjoy
the free speech rights protection granted by the First Amendment
to the entire public. While threats of violence and calling obscene
names are not so covered, allowing the corporate owners of said
social media sites to prohibit such speech, people are able to
express themselves as they see fit. Your mirthful Peasant knows
that this news will give the Silicon Valley elites conniptions,
but these legal points may have a wonderful chance to be upheld in
court. By the by, do you realize that there are lefties who think
that Facebook and friends have not gone far enough in stifling
the speech of conservatives online? Scary times, folks.

And these same people shout to the heavens that conservatives
are escorting the United States into the nether world of autocracy!
Yet they have no qualms about banning conservative content
from the internet whenever and wherever they can.
Oh, if George Orwell could come back for just a day ...


MEM