Social media shouldn’t have been allowed to deplatform Trump
I recently submitted a letter to the Citizen entitled “Media or government?” I would like to submit a new one, this one, with a more apt title: “Big tech or freedom?” The disgraceful suppression of both information and opinion by big tech moguls Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg is nothing less than contemptible. But don’t take my word for it.
Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, Emmanuel Macron the president of France, Andrés Obrador, the president of Mexico and numerous other political figures around the world, have condemned Twitter’s deplatforming and silencing of the former president of the United States and other major figures and organizations because they did not adhere to the 1984ish “right think” they approve of.
Surprisingly, to me at least, was the added condemnation of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). At least this time they got it right. Around the world people are beginning to wake up to what is going on here. The suppression of the New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden was the beginning of it (10 per cent of those who voted Democrat said they would have voted differently if they had known about it) but it has now become far more wide ranging with a recent call from American politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a separate U.S. governmental commission to stop “disinformation.” Translation? That would be anything that is not politically pleasing to them. It has little to do with “mis” or “dis” information.
Dorsey and Zuckerberg are not elected officials. They are not the U.S. government. They have no right to censor news or information in co-operation with any political party they wish to promote or protect, especially when they have the ear of billions. Are they a private company, and should they be able to print, communicate or suppress whatever they want?
Technically yes, but really, no. The fiction of them being a platform and not a publisher is now long gone. They move the opinion and political needle of millions, if not billions, of people. The best analogy for them would be independent modern day feudal information lords, which would make the rest of us digital serfs. That is way too much power for two men to have, and a horrifying danger to the rest of us and our dwindling freedoms.
Perry Foster
Duncan