The first shots of free speech wars were fired, the despicable slime ball and conspiracy nutter Alex Jones was deplatformed by all social media. This highlights the need to regulate social media as a virtual public square. If people like Alex Jones are not free to spew their hate, then nobody has freedom of speech.

A very good article summarizing on-going battles.

The dangers of illiberal liberalism

I find it so unfortunate that even the ACLU has fallen so low, as they were once a great inspiration. Their principled defense of speech and other civil rights across the board, regardless of what someone was saying, or who/what they were, and the accompanying logic behind it, was deeply influential on me in my formative years. It's every bit as disappointing as the NRA failing to stand up for the gun rights of people like Philando Castile (who was lawfully carrying a firearm and shot by police for being black)

That both lobbies have become in-group purveyors of tribalism, abandoning their previous stances on defending the rights of everyone based on principles, shows just how much our national culture has deteriorated.

As predicted, in just short few years this escalated into social media platforms censoring doctors discussing medical treatments.

Shocking recount of social media meddling in US elections by suppressing Hunter Biden laptop story, that have been verified and proven to be accurate. Glenn Greenwald explaining in detail.

What only few years back started as banning of Alex Jones is now naked partisan excercise of power.

You are using another companies platform to express your views. You are at the whims of the parent company, who are exercising their rights to have the content they want on their site. Don't like it? Make your own platform.

And what's this about new proof? And the website you link is literally less than a paragraph containing no additional material to corroborate their claim.

I can clearly see that you have not watched the video (for whatever reasons) where Glenn Greenwald spent more than an hour deep-diving into specifics and timelines. Yes, we live busy lives and you might not know or care to know who is Glenn Greenwald, but if you are going to respond asking for evidence, at least take care to not do so directly in reply to post providing such evidence.

Just to give you some jump points:

4:00 mark - discusses 'big guy' email
8:30 mark - discusses 'Russian disinformation' letter
13:20 mark - discusses Andy Stone's (of Twitter) ties to Democratic Party
40:25 mark - discusses Twitter url blocking New Your Post article
57:00 mark - discusses editorial censoring of Glenn's articles in the Intercept

Considering I'm a journalist that works for CBS News, I think I know who he is.

And you're right I didn't watch the video. I don't have an hour to devote to clickbait ledes and mediocre journalism. If the Author couldn't be damned to give a summation of the video, I'm certainly not going to devote my off time to it. This whole thing is nothing more then political porn devised to froth the right up into a circle jerk frenzy.

And before you go too far into this because I'm likely not to reply much after this. I just don't really see the issue here. Other than the emails being real and the bidens never denying the laptop was Hunters, there is absolutely no proof Biden had met anyone.

At best, you could say that there is no definitive proof that Joe Biden acted on this and abused his office. To me, Hunter Biden selling influence isn't the main story. Suppression of factual and accurate New York Post reporting is the much bigger issue. This is far, far beyond banning fringe crazies like Alex Jones. You have a major newspaper deplatformed only 2 short years after Alex Jones.


I am rather surprised that you do not have any problems with social media suppressing journalism for political purposes. Bad actors claiming without evidence that a politically damaging story is misinformation, no worse - foreign propaganda, and then preventing people from sharing it is nothing short of a scandal. To put it bluntly - Twitter and Facebook suppressed legitimate story from a major news outlet to provide Biden advantage.

How could we have a free society when information is gatekeeped in this way? How can we have free elections when digital communications filtered this way?


In that case, the only reason you would not listen to what Glenn has to say is to intentionally remain uniformed. As his past work is definitive proof that he has integrity and his words have merit you cannot outright dismiss it as clickbait.

I don't because social media is absolutely utter garbage that spreads missinformation at an insane rate and should not be the place people go to get informed. For better or for worse, its within their rights, because again, its their platform and they can do what they want with it. CBS has its own platform for getting news out to the masses, their tv channel and website. Same with the horribly biased conservative tabloid known as the New York Post.


So whats the alternative? Force a fairness doctrine? except there was one previously that applied only to broadcast licenses but not cable tv news. ie fox. Also the conservatives thought fairness was unfair to the right. Although to be fair, Broadcasters did find it overly burdensome as well.
What about the rights of these companies to their free speech? It's a tricky situation but as we've seen previously, ie Carlon's lawyers arguing in court that hes entertainment and that no sane person should believe the shit he says, how is that any better? He can go on air and lie to his viewers, but companies that don't want to spread misinformation are the arbiters of death for democracy and a free society?


His past work is not indicative of his current work and change in mindset and obvious biases.

I see discussions of veracity of social media as a channel for staying informed orthogonal to our discussion of politically motivated censorship. Whatever that assigned value of social media may be, what was done to suppress legitimate New York Post reporting based on manufactured pretext severely undermined that value. As a society, we are worse-off as the result.

Undeniably, the main value of social media is as a method of interpersonal communication. This undeniably translates to power over people. Power without any kind of accountability. I see unelected technocrats meddling in elections as a crisis of democracy and find your attempts to dismiss this as a serious issue unconvincing.

Think of it this way. Imagine an alternative reality where Silicon Valley somewhere in Texas, with HQ predominantly staffed by conservatives. Now imagine if this alternative universe social media suppressed "Grab Them By The Pussy" story, smearing it as "having hallmarks of a foreign disinformation". Would you be nonchalant about that as well?

Until they go after your hosting platform (see Parler).

Until they go after your money source (see Stripe and Paypal cutting services to Subscribestar).

There is a californian cartel and it should be shot down. But it won't because they have the right politics.

Also, platforms should lose their protection under section 230 when they start editing their content for anything not illegal.

Recently Dr. Malone, a scientist, was banned for highlighting risks of COVID vaccinations.

This is the new phase where not only dissenters silenced, but where information contrary to the narrative is getting removed.

From Facebook?

Honestly I think the answer to Facebook can ultimately lie nowhere else but with evolution of social practice. Just like we tell our kids not to take candy from strangers, or get lured into the white van, we are going to have to start teaching our kids not to get baited into interacting with social media - by explaining how such things only exist to manipulate them.

It is going to take time, and there will be a lot of damage in the interim. But at some point people have to accept some responsibility.

Dr. Malone was highly critical of big pharma, CDC response to covid, and was exposing incentivization of over-reporting of COVID by hospitals. For this, he got deplatformed.

Social media is a threat to Western Civilization.

Tech giants banned Trump. But did they censor him?

YouTube Bans C&B For Interviewing A U.S. Senator [Rand Paul]

Interview with Gab CEO, discussing attacks on his platform by Big Tech:

https://rumble.com/vt0wii-gab-ceo-explains-how-big-tech-is-trying-to-destroy-free-speech.html

Fox News host Dan Bongino is permanently banned from YouTube

Facebook just tanked -20% in the markets. No idea why it took so long, but it is encouraging to see that there are costs for misbehaviour and that markets still occasionally deliver reality checks to Big Tech.

Another example of Big Tech agenda-driven censorship.

Fact-Checking, COVID-19 Misinformation, and the British Medical Journal
Trust the Science, unless it disagrees with FB?

Facebook is in fact garbage. This is known.

Also, I'm glad Spotify hasn't removed Joe Rogan. That was encouraging. I think Rogan says a lot of stupid things, but so what. He also says some things that aren't. Hopefully media culture will move away from demanding a false image of perfection (ie; never offending or upsetting anyone) from everyone.

I very much agree with this. In the age of social media the image of perfection could only be a facade. Expecting such could only lead to selective enforcement of impossible standard. Everyone makes mistakes.


I think "things that aren't" are a lot more important. Joe Rogan Experience is one of the few places where dissent from the pushed narrative could be heard.

Think of it this way. A surgeon that only takes on easy tasks will have very low post-surgery mortality rate. A surgeon that takes on critical and dying patients all the time will have a very high mortality rate. Yet, which surgeon do you think saves more lives? It is like that with Rogan.

Outstanding analogy. I'm stealing this.

All Russian media was deplatformed in the West.

Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop confirmed in New York Times report . When are we going to have a judicial inquiry into election meddling by big tech that supressed this story?

Twitter Is Censoring Federalist Reporting As ‘Violent Content’ Coincidentally, this started to happen right after Federalists reported on prosecutors misleading a federal court and circumventing orders during a federal investigation into Project Veritas.

This seems like another escalation in censorship tactics - punitive bans for stories damaging to democrats, then reverse if encountering public blowback. However, how many low-profile journalists and bloggers have enough influence to effectively fight this?

The last independent newspaper in Russia, falls silent

What happening in Russia is a logical conclusion of the trajectory we observed here since 2018. Putin is simply 18 years ahead in this process. We already have FBI unconstitutionaly raiding Project Veritas. It will only get worse.

YouTube Pulls RNC Interview With Donald Trump Over ‘Misinformation’

Do they think there is anybody left who hasn't made up their mind on the issue? Who are they protecting from this?

I am not sure what the long game here by Big Tech. Nuclear war before 2024? Because GOP majorities and presidency (DeSantis, Trump, or Cruz) are going to milk popular support by bouncing the rubble with legislative scorched earth for years. Computers will be illegal in SV by the time they are doing with this.

Elon Must purchased 9% of Twitter shares and got a seat on the board. I am not sure if this is PR stunt or a serious effort to stop collapse of Western Civilization. It makes strategic sense - to build rockets to fly to the Mars you have to have functioning society. If Church of Woke succeeds building DIE theocracy, he won't be allowed to build his rockets or Mars base.

Elon Musk swoops on Twitter with $41 billion cash offer

I am hopeful this is the beginning of the Western Civilization allergic reaction to the SJW mind-virus. Our way of life cannot exist without free speech and that must, there is no other way to go about it, include free speech for content others may find objectionable or offensive. "Safety" and "Inclusion" are only possible in a free society, these values are luxuries afforded to us by Western Liberalism, you can't get there with dictates and censorship.

Musk buys Twitter, plans to take the company private. Promises to re-focus on freedom of speech.

Biden administration protecting thier own - "the administration is specifically wanting to scrutinize Musk’s Twitter deal and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network."

France banned pro-Palestine protests. I see this as a continuiation of the censorship regime. Yes, I understand that France has unique problem with radicalized Islamic population, but this is not a way to address that.

Alex Jones unbanned. I hope this marks begining of the end of this modern era of McCarthyism.