Censorship of big technology comes for conservative voices and comes fast. In their efforts to remove conservative voices from the public sphere, the big technology companies that collectively control the flow of information for billions of people have announced that they have control over the American political system.
We can’t meet in person because of COVID-inspired restrictions, and now we can’t meet online for fear of being silenced.
With the support of influencers such as Michelle Obama, as well as many members of Congress and the media, social networking sites drive conservatives out of their user base. It’s happening at an alarming rate.
The government forced people not to meet in person. His whole life has turned online. And now the spaces that almost everyone uses to interact with friends, work, family, strangers, to meet, to exchange ideas, are cleaned by those who do not adhere to progressive or democratic ideas.
Facebook, Google, Twitter and Apple seem to have joined in taking action against conservative accounts and are doing so shamelessly and without any oversight. Great technology has made us their whore and we can do nothing but comply or be silent.
There is no real way to make this not happen. Great technology has been given the keys to the kingdom and not given back. They have the tools and the power to block dissent and use them.
We are not allowed to go out. We are not allowed to meet. And now we are not allowed to talk online. If the goal of corporate America, the institution and progressive politicians, is to prevent dissent, to prevent those who simply do not agree to say their minds, they are doing a stellar job.
We have willingly given these great technology companies access to our personal details, hopes, dreams, thoughts and ideas. We shared our deepest heartaches and our most ecstatic joys. On Twitter, we shared quick ideas and intense ideas, it was a forum for many to express their outrage, but also to engage with each other in a humanizing way.
Social media is often ridiculed as a garbage dump, a dump, a wasteland, but it is also an amazing tool for creating a new city market, one that is incredibly inclusive, diverse and open. With this latest crackdown, social media is undermining its own utility.
Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Google, YouTube and other platforms have made lots of money from their brilliant inventions. As users moved to these platforms, executives and their shareholders were able to sell advertising to almost all major, minor and independent companies around.
They liked their money, but they didn’t like the way people used what they created. As such, they have moved this week with the corporate weight to block, ban, suspend and remove users from their platforms. While people complain that this is in opposition to the First Amendment, others argue that because social media companies are private, they are not obliged to respect our laws and rights. But at a time when the interface is not optional, those who control it must respond to the public.
We have submitted to the conditions of their use. We obeyed the blockade. We have willingly courted the subjugation of our freedoms. We have allowed this to happen to our society. And we have to take it back. Gather. Speaks. Don’t be silenced.