 |
|
SOCIAL MEDIA DOUBLE STANDARDS
For Trump's allies and supporters, banning Trump on Twitter and other social media platform is an attempt to wreck freedom of speech. It's unacceptable to them. But for Trump's opponents, it's a necessary measure to denounce violence, smash efforts to glorify violence, and protect social order and stability. The so-called freedom of speech is just a tool for Americans to attack each other, or insult other countries.Donald Trump hasn’t been the only Conservative voice silenced by social media tyrants in recent years. PragerU, a non-profit that creates videos and other Conservative content, had two videos removed because they contained “hate speech,” although Facebook never explained what portion of the video they were referring to. In addition, (7)>>PragerU personality Will Witt shared that nine of the organization’s posts were completely censored, reaching zero of their three million followers. Twitter has been known to hold Liberal celebrities to a much different standard, allowing them to break community guidelines. (8)>>Kathy Griffin posted a graphic image of Trump’s severed head shortly after he was elected. While she face massive outrage from Liberals and Conservatives alike, Twitter still has allowed her to put out threatening Tweets over the past two years. This serves as the perfect example of the double standard Twitter holds in favor of those who politically align with their agenda.
THE FUTURE of TRUMP's LAWSUIT against Social Media Giants .
Trump accused the companies of violating First Amendment free speech rights through "censorship" against him and others, "blacklisting" and "canceling" people for political reasons. "If they can do it to me, they can do it to anyone," he said. (9)>>It’s true that the First Amendment ordinarily applies to the government rather than private companies. But the central claim in Mr. Trump’s class-action lawsuit—that the defendants should be treated as state actors and are bound by the First Amendment when they engage in selective political censorship—has precedent to back it up. Their censorship constitutes state action because the government granted them immunity from legal liability, threatened to punish them if they allow disfavored speech, and colluded with them in choosing targets for censorship. The companies are private and therefore not subject to First Amendment claims from users and have liability protections under Section 230. But in his lawsuits, Trump is arguing that the tech giants worked with the government to censor Americans and thus are “state actors” who can be sued.The banishment of Trump by major tech platforms reignited Republican calls to revoke the legal shield, arguing that it has enabled social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to censor conservative viewpoints.Trump recently stepped up his public activity by restarting rallies and making a trip to the southern U.S. border last week to criticize Biden’s immigration policies. He’s backing candidates in the 2022 midterm elections and actively opposing others. He has also held out the prospect of running again for president in 2024.Trump and the MAGAs can create their own websites and host their own platforms. They violated FB and Twitters terms. Just because they violated the rules of one playground doesn't mean they're unable to build their own sandbox. The rest of the internet is out there and they're free to take their nonsense to the far corners of it. Three words - Lab Leak Theory. Despite being a perfectly reasonable theory of possible COVID origin point, the idea was denounced as a conspiracy, with backing by government figures, and then used to censor "misinformation" on sites like Facebook. If this isn't censoring with government sanction, then I don't know what is. I'll have to do research on the legal precedents mentioned here, but if they hold up in court, then Mr. Trump might have this in the bag.
NOTES AND COMMENTS:
(1)>>Trump's lawsuit against the Social Media giants is a good thing for anyone . Donald Trump told Bill O’Reilly that he is eager to sit for a deposition in the lawsuit he filed against Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube . The class-action lawsuit filed in the South Florida U.S. District Court claims that Facebook, Alphabet’s YouTube, and Twitter are censoring Trump and other Americans. The litigation seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, and wants the court to strike down a portion of the law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.Because Trump had nearly 90 million followers on Twitter and used his account primarily to broadcast ideas, Rosenblatt Securities analyst Mark Zgutowicz predicted the stock could benefit if the former president succeeded in convincing a federal judge to lift the ban. " How can social media claim to be fostering democratic debate when they are suppressing the voice of the leading figure of one of the two major political parties? How is this different from digital suppression in one-party states like North Korea and China?" Dinesh D'Souza.(2)>> In January, many online platforms decided they no longer wanted to host President Trump’s speech. SEE THE ACLU argument here ⇛⇛https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/the-problem-with-censoring-political-speech-online-including-trumps/ ACLU, expressed concern that a few of these companies — namely Facebook, Google, and Twitter — wield such enormous power over online speech that, if they used it against people with fewer outlets than the president of the United States, the companies could effectively silence them. It seems that the "experts" are trying to characterize this suit as Trump wanting to restrict the "free speech" of social media companies. Actually, the question is should these companies be immune from lawsuits due to the protection they get from section 230? Publishers enjoy freedom of speech, but if they commit slander, libel or spread misinformation they can be sued. Section 230 protects the social media companies from such suits. The companies justify this by saying they have an open board--i.e. people are free to post anything--the companies do not control the content. However, the media companies are not allowing some people to post anything and other people and topics are also restricted. When a company edits its content then they no longer have an open board. They are effectively making statements. If these statement are slanderous, libelous or untrue then the victims of the statements should be able to sue them. That is the question being addressed--should the social media companies be immune from such suits given their "editing" of the content on their boards.(3)>>2017, a Twitter employee went so far as to deactivate President Trump’s account. A customer service employee deactivated the @realdonaldtrump account, it said, clarifying that it had been their last day in the job.The account was down for 11 minutes. The latest incident has sparked debate about the security of the president's account, given the potential consequences of posts falsely attributed to Mr Trump being published.After the account was restored, Mr Trump's first tweet was about the Republican Party's tax cuts plan.Twitter said it was investigating the problem and taking steps to avoid it happening again.On Thursday evening, the @TwitterGov account wrote: "Through our investigation we have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee's last day. We are conducting a full internal review." (4)>>Social Media Platforms totally silence. Free speech is universal. If this class action lawsuit goes nowhere, then it is time to elect officials that will make laws to keep corporate America from censoring, from keeping news offline (Hunters laptop), from shutting down any debate that has political ramifications, and preventing anything that copies China’s CCP party of preventing dissenting opinions. Times have changed. All information flows thru the internet, and most of it flows thru social media platforms. It is about time these platforms are forced to uphold freedom of speech that is guaranteed in our constitution.(5)>>Trump's opponents support the ban, arguing it's not an infringement upon freedom of speech. Many people are complaining about being kicked off social media platforms, either because of particular posts or because of a series of posts. And the question arises, do you have a right not to be kicked off Facebook, Twitter, etc.? The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Trump encouraged and amplified these arguments when he issued a (largely symbolic) executive order in May 2020 declaring that “free speech is the bedrock of American democracy,” and insisted that “in a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand pick the speech that Americans may access and convey.” The deplatforming of the president appeared to many conservatives to offer vivid proof that these companies are just as dangerous to freedom of speech as Trump had claimed.(6)>>The hypocrisy and double standards of US democracy have increasingly been laid bare in recent years. Regardless of US hypocrisy when it comes to freedom of speech, banning Trump on social media platforms offers us a chance to redefine and understand freedom of speech. "Even in the US, a country which claims itself to be the beacon of democracy, freedom of speech has boundaries and bottom lines," said Xin Qiang, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University. Throughout US history, fearing the implications of real democracy, political elites and powerful stakeholders have often manipulated laws and policies to advance their own motives and to maintain power.(7)>>PragerU personality. A federal court in California has ruled that tech platforms like YouTube aren't bound by the First Amendment when they're deciding whether to remove offensive content.The ruling was made during a case brought by the right-wing group Prager University, which sued YouTube and its parent company Google in 2017 for flagging some of its videos as "inappropriate." PragerU posts videos on everything from economics to philosophy from a conservative perspective.It argued that YouTube marking its videos as inappropriate constituted illegal censorship under the First Amendment. According to The Wall Street Journal, the flagged videos included titles like "Are 1 in 5 Women Raped at College?" and "Why Isn't Communism as Hated as Nazism?" (8)>>Kathy Griffin posted a graphic image of Trump’s severed head shortly after he was elected. Griffin shared the infamous, bloody photo, 2017 photo of her holding a prop meant to look like President Trump's severed head after he won the election against Hillary.I don't have a high degree of confidence in this view, but I don't see why Kathy Griffin lost jobs/sponsors and received so much criticism. Part of being a comedian is making jokes about current events, and currently a large percentage of humanity figuratively wants Trump's head on a stick. The only time I disapprove of a joke/gag is when it spreads misinformation or hatred. I don't believe anyone who saw this image took it as a rallying call to decapitate Trump. The comedian took back her apology for the stunt in which she held up a fake severed head of President Trump while being interviewed in Australia."I'm no longer sorry. The whole outrage was BS. The whole thing got so blown out of proportion," said Griffin on Australia's Sunrise show. (9)>>It’s true that the First Amendment ordinarily applies to the government rather than private companies. Zuckerberg ran a shadow government and paid for election sites and boxes that contributed to the massive fraud (but of course even that wasn't enough to fix election - China/Iran/and others had to shut it down in 6 states and run their magic algorithm) - but the point is FB and Twitter seem to be more like the CCP (and CIA) than an American company with American principles. Of course, papers like WSJ aren't that much better ...Of course, Trump's and tens of thousands of others were denied their First Amendment Rights, and the fact that it has gone on so long just shows you the depth of the corruption in the courts, and up and down the system. A brave judge couldn't deny it ... but bravery is rare these days.The Gaslighting and Censorship has fooled those in a Propaganda/Trump Derangement Syndrome stupor, but it has only awaken those who love this country and are ready to defend it.The idea that a private company can apply censorship is appalling. Only a judge should be entitled to do that. At least in a democracy. It is fundamental that this issue is addressed and Social Media be considered for what they are: utilities, that must abide by the First: freedom of speech, and freedom to "petition the government for a redress of grievances".
