Thankfully, in the United States (at least today) the First Amendment is still intact, but in places like Canada,12 Germany,13 England,14 Scotland,15 and other supposedly “free” countries, people are being arrested and charged with “hate speech” crimes for posting things on their social media accounts that are critical of the “Islamization of Europe” from the mass influx of Muslim refugees and for voicing opposition to the LGBT agenda.16
But while Americans are still technically free to say these things without getting arrested, there are other serious consequences since we’re living in an online world where most people rely on a handful of apps to communicate with others. Back in 1997, Harvard Law professor Larry Lessig wrote an article for Wired magazine titled “Tyranny in the Infrastructure” warning that, “Laws affect the pace of technological change, but the structures of software can do even more to curtail freedom. In the long run the shackles built by programmers could well constrain us more.”17
In his book Cyber Ethics: Morality and Law in Cyberspace, Richard A. Spinello expanded on this concern saying, “This notion that private code can be a more potent constraining force than public law has significant implications. The use of code as a surrogate for law may mean that certain public goods or moral values once protected by law will now be ignored or compromised by those who develop or utilize this code.”18
We’re seeing the very principle of free speech under attack like never before, with the Liberal Media Industrial Complex even claiming that freedom of speech is “dangerous” and saying that conservatives have “weaponized” the First Amendment.19 There have always been restrictions on the First Amendment, for example you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, and you can’t threaten to murder someone or encourage acts of terrorism; but today just insulting a person who believes there are 58 different gender identities or pointing out certain facts and statistics is considered “hateful” and “dangerous.”
Democrat Congressman Ted Lieu from California says he’s frustrated by the fact that the First Amendment is preventing him from silencing conservatives for Thought Crimes, so he’s calling on the Big Tech companies to do it on the government’s behalf.20 Meanwhile Jerry Nadler, a Democrat Congressman from New York, says it’s just a “conspiracy theory” that the Big Tech companies have a liberal bias and, “The notion that social media companies are filtering out conservative voices is a hoax, a tired narrative of imagined victimhood.”21 Other Democrat members of Congress, like Jamie Raskin from Maryland, insist that it is an “entirely imaginary narrative that social media companies are biased against conservatives.”22
Of course CNN repeatedly denies conservatives are being censored and claims that pushback from President Trump is, “exacerbating a longstanding paranoia from conservatives who have for years erroneously accused social media companies of bias and censorship.”23 It’s just paranoia that conservatives are being censored, guys! Nothing to worry about!
CNN claims, “For years, the conservative media machine has pushed the flimsy narrative that conservatives are unfairly treated by social media companies, which they accuse of bias and censorship. When the claims often fall apart under a light touch of scrutiny, right-wing media outlets continue to advance the narrative, irrespective of the facts.”24
After years of mounting evidence, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey finally admitted that even conservatives who work at Twitter, “don’t feel safe to express their opinions at the company” and that “They do feel silenced by just the general swirl of what they perceive to be the broader percentage of leanings within the company.”25
With each new purge of conservative voices from the social media platforms, more and more people are seeing just how big of a threat these tech giants are to the principles of free speech and the massive implications of their monopoly on communication tools.
Donald Trump Jr., who obviously has the president’s ear, has also been very vocal about the increasing censorship on social media, even writing an op-ed about it in The Hill, saying, “Our right to freely engage in public discourse through speech is under sustained attack, necessitating a vigorous defense against the major social media and internet platforms.”26
In May 2019, the White House set up a new tool on WhiteHouse.gov for people to report instances of social media bias and censorship so the Trump administration could put together more thorough reports of what conservatives are facing online.27 The page includes a form for users to submit details about which post was taken down, what it said, and which platform removed it. “Social media platforms should advance freedom of speech. Yet too many Americans have seen their accounts suspended, banned, or fraudulently reported for unclear ‘violations’ of user policies,” the website reads.28
In subsequent chapters I’ll detail what’s been happening on each of the major social media platforms, but rampant censorship isn’t limited to just Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Music Streaming Services
While politicians and news commentators have always had to watch what they say about certain subjects so they don’t get fired, artists have always been seen as the bastions of free speech, and censoring art—no matter how provocative or offensive it is to some people—was always seen as something only a tyrannical government would do. Major music labels and movie studios always stood by their artists and vigorously resisted calls for censorship, championing the freedom of expression whether it was NWA’s “Fuck the Police” or blasphemous anti-Christian films like The Da Vinci Code or Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ.
But in August 2017 Spotify, the popular music streaming service, announced they would start censoring songs from “hate bands” including songs they claim “incite violence against race, religion, [or] sexuality.”29 How will they determine which bands and songs to censor? Whatever the Southern Poverty Law Center tells them to.30 Not surprising, the SPLC got their tentacles wrapped around Spotify and other streaming services to “help” them keep a lookout for “hateful” content.31
Other streaming services like Apple and Pandora followed suit, banning supposed “white power” music, while allowing rap music that blatantly calls for the murder of police officers from people like Ice-T, NWA, and Snoop Dogg, who recently depicted himself murdering President Trump in one of his music videos.32 As you know, it’s common for rappers to diss “crackers” and “white boys” in their music, but that’s just fine. Hating white people isn’t considered to be racist to the Left. And Jay Z’s albums are okay, despite calling women “bitches” in (literally) 50% of his songs.33
About a year later Spotify announced another new policy, saying they were going to start banning songs from artists who have engaged in “harmful or hateful conduct” in their personal lives, like domestic violence or sexual abuse. That put songs by R. Kelly and Michael Jackson at risk of not being available anymore. But then just three weeks later they reversed their decision and apologized, saying they don’t want to be the “moral police,” but affirmed that they were still going to be censoring “hate speech.”34