“Those who control story, control society.”

-Plato

Introduction

Since 2016, using the pretext of suppressing information, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn have silenced conservatives.

It is now becoming clear that these social media platforms were following orders from government agencies.

Obama’s Embrace of Censorship

Former President Obama bemoaned the rise of “fake news” both before and after the 2016 election. Obama’s discussion of “fake news” always carried the implication that what is “fake” must be excised.

At a Stanford speech in April, Obama called for “solving the disinformation problem” with social media censorship of “hate speech” and said that content moderation “does not go far enough.”

Speaking at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit in June, Obama called for a total worldwide ban on content he deemed to be “disinformation.” Obama continued by demanding that technology companies “accept oversight and accountability.”

Weaponizing Social Media

Censorship by social media escalated after 2016 because, in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s loss, the Democratic National Committee concluded the reason Trump was elected was because of “misinformation.” In 2016, social media platforms became weaponized.

In July 2021, then White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked by a reporter how the White House was policing information.

In one of the most anti-free speech statements ever made by the U.S. government, she said, “We are flagging posts for Facebook that spread misinformation. We are in regular touch with these social media platforms regarding the issue of misinformation.”

In an interview with Joe Rogan in August, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook made a mistake when it banned the New York Post report on Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election.

The laptop contained graphic information on Hunter’s sex life, drug use and questionable business dealings with China and Ukraine. Zuckenberg confessed that the FBI had told him not to allow the story to gain traction. The FBI claimed the story was Russian disinformation.

It has also been discovered, thanks to a whistleblower in the Department of Justice, that Facebook has been spying of their users private messages and reporting “subversive” private messages to the FBI.

Private conversations on Facebook are protected by the First Amendment. Facebook and the FBI have been ignoring legal requirements to obtain probably cause and subpoenas before spying on Facebook users.

Google controls about 95 percent of online searches, giving them a unique ability to influence what users see when they attempt to learn about a subject.

During the 2020 election, Google altered its algorithm to ensure that negative stories about Trump were what people saw when doing a Trump search.

Political cartoonist Michael Ramirez has won two Pulitzer Prizes and his cartoons are published around the world.

The Google “content police” deemed his cartoons had “shocking content” and placed restrictions on the cartoons which reduced revenue Ramirez can generate from the cartoons.

Department of Homeland Security [DHS]

During the 2020 election, the DHS outsourced censorship assignments to private sector partners. The DHS deputized private sector partners to pressure social media to cancel objectionable posts that questioned the election.

After Biden’s victory, the DHS rewarded its private sector partners with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in federal grants.

Chris Krebs, then Director of the DHS sub-agency that ran the censorship campaign, famously declared the 2020 election to be “the most secure in election history.”

Conclusion

The First Amendment has no qualfier excluding “misinformation.” The Founders of America understood that all opinions and viewpoints are in need of protection.

The FBI had Hunter Biden’s laptop in their possession in 2019. They were very aware of the unsavory contents when they told Facebook to kill the story from the New York Post just before the 2020 election.

Benjamin Franklin warned 250 years ago, “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech.”

Photo by Victoria Pickering

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