Tag Archives: social media censorship

Violating The First Amendment

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On Monday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the pressure put on Facebook to censor speech that did not conform to the government narrative regarding Covid and Covid vaccines.

The article reports:

  • Members of the Biden administration pressured Facebook on not censoring a video of Tucker Carlson that was critical of vaccines in April of 2021, according to documents published Monday by Louisiana State Attorney General Jeff Landry.
  • Facebook ultimately refused multiple calls to delete the video, despite one White House official insinuating that the company’s intransigence was responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots, according to the documents..
  • “Throughout our case, we have uncovered disturbing collusion between Big Tech and Big Government,” Attorney General Landry told the DCNF. “Today’s reveal is yet another example of the ongoing coercive efforts by the White House to pressure social media companies into censoring American citizens.”

Presidents and media have had an up and down relationship since we have had both. I am sure that if President Kennedy had been able to control what The New York Times was reporting about him, he would have. However, that is no excuse for the bad behavior of the Biden administration.

The article continues:

Officials in the Biden administration repeatedly questioned Facebook’s decision to not completely censor a video posted by Tucker Carlson criticizing COVID-19 vaccines, at one point insinuating that the company was encouraging violent behavior and responsible for the Jan. 6 “insurrection,” according to emails published Monday by Louisiana State Attorney General Jeff Landry.

Andrew Slavitt — at the time the Biden administration’s COVID-19 czar — wrote a message to Facebook staff on the morning of April 14, 2021, expressing frustration that a Tucker Carlson video that was critical of COVID-19 was the “[n]umber one” post on Facebook, according to the emails. A Facebook staffer responded to Slavitt’s request at nearly 11:00 p.m. the same day, informing him that while the Carlson video did not qualify for removal, it was no longer being recommended to users, had a label sending users to “authoritative” sources of information on the pandemic and was being “demoted,” according to the emails.

It is illegal for the government to ask a private corporation to do something that the government cannot themselves legally do. This is a perfect example of that. Everyone involved needs to be fired and put in jail. Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is chilling.

What Difference Did It Make?

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We are getting a lot of information right now about the censorship operation that Twitter was operating in order to protect the Biden campaign during the 2020 election. The information is not really surprising to those of us who were paying attention, but some of this is actually news to many Americans. On Saturday, PJ Media posted an article about the probable consequences of Twitter’s censorship.

The article notes:

Let’s begin with the premise that suppressing the content of Hunter Biden’s laptop affected the outcome of the 2020 Election. The Media Research Center (MRC) conducted one of the only polls about how the information on the computer would have affected the way people voted. MRC’s analysis found that full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal would have led 9.4% of Biden voters to abandon the Democratic candidate. This would have flipped all six of the swing states Biden won to Trump, giving the former President 311 electoral votes.

By that analysis, if not for the fateful decision to censor the laptop story, which Gadde and Baker had a hand in, at least five major things would be different.

The article then goes on to list five of the things that would be different:

First and foremost, it is almost certain there would not be a war in Ukraine right now. President Trump placed sanctions on the Nord 2 pipeline during his term, despite German objections. All Biden had to do was stand up to outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel. After all, the entire purpose of NATO is to protect the European continent from Russian aggression. Letting Germany and other western powers become dependent on Russian energy goes directly against the mission.

When the Biden administration inexplicably lifted the sanctions in May 2021, it green-lit the pipeline that would bypass Ukraine, depriving the former Soviet nation of transit revenues and making it more vulnerable to Russian aggression. Even Ukrainian President Voldymor Zelensky knew it.

…Next, the Ukrainian war led to Russia and China becoming closer allies and leading the BRIC nations. This group includes Brazil and India. Many believe these nations will be dominant suppliers of manufactured goods, services, and raw materials by 2050. There have been reports that BRIC nations and their allies want to replace the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The Biden administration seems content to let this happen without a challenge. As the kleptocrats in our government, led by Joe Biden and Wall Street, lead us into managed decline, you can thank Gadde and Baker.

Third, our European allies would not be facing an energy crisis. The war in Ukraine needlessly destroyed Nord 1, which supplied much of the continent. Additionally, the Biden administration’s not-in-my-backyard energy policy leaves the U.S. unable to meet our own energy needs, let alone help Europe.

…The same NIMBY energy policy also makes the United States less safe. In a 2020 debate, Trump explained in about 10 seconds how U.S. energy independence strengthened our foreign policy. Now, Joe Biden begs some of the worst dictators in the world for oil, and they laugh at him. Biden also drains our strategic petroleum reserves to save Democrats from getting obliterated in the midterms, leaving us less prepared.

The article concludes:

Finally, as you struggle with inflation on food and gas, know that it never needed to happen. When Trump left office, the economy was recovering from the pandemic on a V-shaped trajectory. The American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure bill, and the Inflation Reduction Act blew more money into an economy overheated by pandemic relief. When the new administration allowed even more dollars to chase fewer goods, prices rose. So, when you are rolling your eyes over your grocery bill, thank Gadde and Baker. Their manipulation of Twitter helped Joe Biden do that.

The only constitutional solution to a stolen election is the next election. Please keep that in mind. For those of you that hate President Trump, remember the good he did for the average American. You may not like his style, but he accomplished more in four years than the past five presidents. In the interest of fairness and for the good of the country, he needs to be re-elected in 2024.

A Victory For Freedom Of Speech

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Having been routinely shadow banned on Facebook (there is a Right Wing Granny group on Facebook, please join), I appreciate the fact that Texas is fighting the censorship that Big Tech has imposed on conservatives in recent years. It seems that there may be an end to that censorship. As I write this, a friend’s post has been thoroughly blacked out because Facebook didn’t think anyone should be allowed to see it.

On Tuesday, Fox News reported the following:

A federal appeals court upheld a Texas law on Friday that seeks to curb censorship by social media platforms. The ruling, a major victory for Republicans who charge companies like Twitter and Facebook are limiting free speech, is a step in a major legal battle that could end up at the Supreme Court.

The lawsuit is challenging HB 20, a Texas bill signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott that regulates social media platforms with more than 50 million monthly users, which includes Google, Facebook and Twitter, and says they cannot censor or limit users’ speech based on viewpoint expression. 

In his opinion, Federal Judge Andrew S. Oldham of the Fifth Circuit said the platforms argued for “a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment” that “buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.”

“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” Judge Oldham continued.

The article notes:

Friday’s ruling created what is known as a “circuit split,” since the eleventh circuit struck down a similar social media law in Florida. A circuit split generally increases the likelihood of the Supreme Court taking up a case.

It will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court will take the case and what their ruling will be. It is also interesting to see if this case settled  before the mid-term election.

This Could Get Very Interesting

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In May, The Epoch Times reported that Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on April 5 suing President Joe Biden, White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and other top administration officials for allegedly pressuring and colluding with social media giants with the aim of censoring and suppressing free speech. In July, The Epoch Times reported that Eric Schmitt, Missouri’s Republican attorney general, announced on social media on July 13 that Terry Doughty, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, had ruled in favor of the request for the discovery process. The case is going forward.

On August 1, The Epoch Times reported:

The subpoenas and discovery requests sent out as part of a lawsuit against the federal government are going to bring back reams of information, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry says.

Landry and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, both Republicans, sued the Biden administration in May, arguing the government colluded with Big tech companies to violate the constitutional rights of Americans.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, recently ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Government officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci and companies including Facebook were served soon after.

“We’ve got a treasure trove of information that we think are going to come to us here shortly,” Landry said on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

“The subpoenas have gone out. They’re being served. I think Dr. Fauci got served, and he and other members of the president’s Cabinet, and they’re gonna have to send us communications between them and the platforms. And what we believe we’ll find is communications between them telling them what they should and shouldn’t put out or what they should suppress, and what they should amplify,” he added.

Government officials have said they have not acted improperly.

The article concludes:

Landry said that the government is violating citizens’ rights by pressuring companies to ban or take other punitive action against users. In a separate case, documents released this month showed U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials highlighting specific posts in messages to Twitter executives while complaining about alleged misinformation from those users. Whistleblower documents released by two U.S. senators in June, meanwhile, showed that U.S. officials had been in touch with Twitter over purported disinformation.

“I think what we found, and what the whistleblowers put out, was that the government was actually engaged, and the White House, in directly communicating with Big Tech on stories and information that they either wanted suppressed or put out,” Landry said.

It’s definitely time to get out the popcorn–this lawsuit is going to be very entertaining.

This Might Be A Very Interesting Case

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On Tuesday, The Epoch Times reported that Terry Doughty, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, has ruled that Missouri and Louisiana officials can obtain documents to investigate the Biden administration’s alleged collusion with social media giants in an effort to censor and suppress free speech.

The article reports:

The ruling comes after the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri filed a lawsuit in May alleging that the Biden administration “colluded with and/or coerced social media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social media platforms by labeling the content ‘disinformation,’ ‘misinformation,’ and ‘malinformation.’”

The attorneys general named social media giants such as Meta, Twitter, and YouTube in a press release announcing the lawsuit in May.

They also claimed that President Joe Biden himself, along with other top-ranking government officials, had worked with the platforms to censor and suppress free speech, including “truthful information” pertaining to the origins of COVID-19, the effectiveness of masks, election integrity, and the security of voting by mail, as well as the ongoing Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

Among the defendants named in the lawsuit are Biden, former press secretary Jen Psaki, chief medical adviser to the president and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Disinformation Governance Board executive director Nina Jankowicz, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and others.

As someone whose Right Wing Granny group is almost always ‘restricted’ on Facebook, I appreciate their efforts. I have been ‘shadow banned’ for years. It has become a way of life.

Do you honestly believe that if the truth about Hunter’s laptop, President Biden’s mental state, or the honest numbers on Covid-19 had been generally known by the public, the vote for President would have been even close? I don’t believe 2020 was an honest election, but that is another story. A Republic (which America is–not a Democracy) depends on a free, honest press to inform its citizens. We don’t have that right now. The only way you are going to find out what is actually happening is to go to the internet and find news sources you trust. You cannot currently find a lot of truth in any of the mainstream media.

Investigating Social Media Censorship

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On July 14th, The Conservative Review posted an article about the ongoing battle between Twitter and free speech. For a real analysis of exactly who and what Twitter is, please read this article from The Conservative Treehouse.

The article at The Conservative Review reports:

Can Congress pass a law requiring that all platforms of speech censor any negative comment about Pfizer? “Well, of course not,” you will say, “it violates the First Amendment.” In that case, why should it be different when the executive branch works intimately with government-created and liability-protected monopolies to zap anyone’s Twitter account who is critical of Pfizer and its magical products? That is not free market or private enterprise; it is the worst form of fascism, and now a new federal court ruling might bring this point to life.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Louisiana granted the request from the Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general for discovery to collect documents linking the Biden administration to social media censorship. Thanks to this important order, we might be able to discover the scope of collaboration between government and Twitter and Facebook to censor stories (and people) pertaining to the Hunter Biden laptop story, the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of masks and lockdowns, and election integrity.

On May 5, Missouri AG Eric Schmitt and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry filed a First Amendment complaint against the Biden administration in the Western District of Louisiana alleging that the administration violated the Free Speech Clause by working with the tech giants to label all dissenting viewpoints on the aforementioned issues as “misinformation.” They alleged that this effort is being led by a “Disinformation Governance Board” (“DGB”) within the Department of Homeland Security.

The article concludes:

While the legal dispute plays out in court, it’s time for conservatives in the legislatures to hit back at the RINO governors for continuing to act as if anything COVID-related – be it a vaccine or mask mandate – is somehow coming from the private sector. The government mandated it for some, censored opposing viewpoints, absolved pharma of liability, paid for the product, distributed it, and marketed it. The notion that private actors endorsing these policies is an exercise in free-market capitalism is absurd. It is the responsibility of the state to interpose against such tyranny by banning companies from joining in with the federal policies.

We saw this done very effectively when the Florida Department of Health recommended against the baby shots and refused to distribute them. Publix actually decided on its own to follow the guidance of Florida rather than the federal government. It demonstrates that so much of this enforcement in the private sector is being done with the federal boot on companies’ necks. Those Republicans who hide behind affinity for the “private” sector and free markets to allow federal tyranny, censorship, and persecution to continue are complicit in the worst form of fascism.
The fact that private monopolies get roped into government fascism doesn’t ameliorate the pig; it makes it even more dangerous.

As I write this, I am restricted on Facebook because of posting articles about the effectiveness of the Covid vaccine and the health problems people have experienced as a result of the vaccine. I believe this information should be easily accessible to the public, but evidently Facebook does not. I am not telling people to avoid social media, but I strongly suggest that you find sources other than Facebook and Twitter for your news if you want to get all of the news.