Online media appears to be under the control of powerful leftists who make subjective decisions as to what type of information can and should be permitted on their sites. Twitter and Facebook silence conservative voices while allowing liberals to speak unmuted. Google is scheming to downgrade conservative news media while upgrading liberal media in their search results. Conservative lawmakers are beginning to ponder government-backed solutions to these problems.
On Thursday afternoon, Jewish conservative commentator Laura Loomer handcuffed herself to a single door panel of Twitter's NYC building (a rather considerate move, to allow people to pass through the other door of the building, she explained when asked why she chose to handcuff herself to only a single door). She was wearing a large Jewish star on her chest, evocative of the 1930's Nazi regime requirement of Jews, and was displaying large images of two tweets, one allowed and one forbidden by Twitter.
The image of the tweet that was allowed by Twitter was by raging anti-semite Louis Farrakhan, who wrote: "I'm not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite." A video attached to Farrakhan's tweet was of him spewing antisemitic propaganda. The second image displayed by Loomer was of a tweet she wrote that was disallowed by Twitter and resulted in her removal from their platform. In that tweet, Loomer called out Muslim congresswoman elect Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) "anti Jewish" and wrote that Omar is a member of a religion in which "homosexuals are oppressed" and "women are abused" and "forced to wear the hijab."
Most notably, Loomer did not call Muslims names or insults, and she did not call for the murder of Muslim people. She instead simply made assertions about Islamic beliefs, which through civil discourse can be either sustained or denied with evidence. Farrakhan, on the other hand, engaged in hateful name-calling and called for the extermination of Jewish people. If someone was going to be banned, it should have been Farrakhan. But he was not banned. His call for extermination is still on Twitter.
For argument's sake, evidence from around the world fully supports Loomer's statements about Islamic policy and Omar. Evidence such as death penalty for homosexuality, the arrest of women who report rape, the arrest of women who refuse to wear a hijab, and Omar's documented Islamic-inspired hatred of the only Jewish country in the world. Loomer shouldn't have been banned by Twitter. But Loomer is conservative. And together with a list of others like her, she received disparate treatment by Twitter.
On the evening of Loomer's handcuff protest, Daily Caller revealed that they uncovered communications by Google employees who intended to intentionally bury conservative media in Google's search results. These leftist Google employees felt that Donald Trump's win was a heinous, "deeply offense" occurrence and that Google was responsible by allowing conservative media to show up in search results when people searched for various queries.
Senator-elect Josh Hawley responded to the story in outrage, tweeting "Google execs need to explain what is going on here. Under oath." And they will. Google chief executive Sundar Pichai is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on December 5. The panel’s GOP leader, Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte wants to find out if Google is using its algorithms to "suppress particular viewpoints and manipulate public opinion.”
But the industrious silencing of conservative voices with the comparative amplification of liberal voices is nothing new for social media giants. Just a few weeks ago, Twitter allowed socialist supremacists to publish Tucker Carlson's home address and private identifying information on their platform and refused to take down the data after continuous requests. In response, Fox News has ceased using twitter.
Leading conservative commentators Michelle Malkin, Ben Shapiro and Dana Loesch have been very vocal this summer about Twitter shadow-banning conservative accounts. After leftist media joined in exposing the shadowban, Twitter appeared to have corrected their algorithms.
Twitter and Google are instrumental in politics. A federal judge wrote a 75-page decision back in May acknowledging this, accusing the President of unconstitutionally blocking unfavorable individuals on Twitter. So should the federal government begin regulating these communications giants? If a judge can order the President to unblock some Twitter trolls, can the FEC order Twitter to stop trolling conservatives?
OANN host Jack Posobiec tweeted on Friday, "Raise your hand if you agree it’s time for @realDonaldTrump to order the FCC to investigate the Social Media Giants," to which prominent conservative Dinesh D'Souza responded, "I am moving reluctantly toward this position. FCC regulates radio and TV and social media today is at least as much a part of the public square as those media." Earlier this summer, Republican Representative Steve King of Iowa stated, “What about converting the large behemoth organizations that we’re talking about here into public utilities?”
Respectfully, I must disagree with King, Posobiec, and D'Souza. Social outrage, respectful discourse, and demonstrative protest are powerful battle weapons. So is reduced market demand. Comparatively, government regulation is napalm. Napalm is difficult to keep under control. It's also unremovable. Governments just don't give up control powers, it just doesn't happen. It's a "once you pop you can't stop" situation. Government control also leads to terrible quality control. In essence, governmental control is a "save it by killing it" philosophy, a solution embraced by PETA, an organization that believes that killing animals is more humane than letting them live. Yes, PETA kills pets, but I digress.
As conservatives who fight against the expansion of government regulation, we cannot turn to regulation for answers. We need to trust the marketplace and to do its job. If enough people find Twitter's policies more offensive than the benefit they derive from it, then they will stop using it. Just as consumer demand made Twitter the giant that it is, so too can drop in demand lead to its demise. Remember MySpace?
Let the marketplace do its job. Let the people make demands of their providers. Do not interfere. Laissez faire.