Friday big tech monopolies started their purge of conservative voices at the very top, by banning President Donald Trump from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch and others in a coordinated attempt to silence him at the end of his first term as President.
As Ann Althouse noted, there was nothing about President Trump’s speech (or his tweets, for that matter) that incited violence.
But Trump wasn’t the end of it. As Ed Driscoll noted over on Instapundit, “TODAY, SILICON VALLEY SETTLES ALL FAMILY BUSINESS:”
Google suspends right-wing app ‘Parler’ from Google Play Store.
Earlier: Apple Has Threatened To Ban Parler From The App Store.
UPDATE: Steve Bannon’s podcast shuttered by YouTube over false 2020 election claims.
And by “false voting fraud claims” they mean “mostly true voting fraud claims.”
Among the people who have been booted:
Salem Media’s Kevin McCullough, who posted questions about the votes moving backwards in the Georgia run-offs and posted Trump’s video from his rally.
The Team Trump account was axed too.
Techno Fog who broke court documents on the Russia hoax.
Tracy Beanz who also did yeoman’s work on Russia hoax.
Influencers on the right suddenly over the last couple of days were also finding their Twitter followers dropping off precipitously. Not just a few people but a lot of influencers, even smaller not well-known people.
Lots of people are having followers purged, including myself, though I’ve only lost some 100-odd. Can;t say whether this is a purge of inactive accounts or not.
Facebook also banned the #WalkAway campaign and Brandon Straka:
Today Facebook took down the #WalkAway Campaign, and with it, the hundreds of thousands of videos & written stories of real people leaving the left. They banned me, my employees & volunteers.
We are moving to https://t.co/wsGFdNe6ND
Plz sign up & join #WalkAway Campaign group pic.twitter.com/quvahfap0z— Brandon Straka (@BrandonStraka) January 9, 2021
There are probably a lot more bannings I’ve missed.
Social media has become a clear and present danger to American freedoms:
In case you haven’t been paying attention, the battle over personal data, free speech and the free flow of information between the American people and the tech giants is heating up. As the Googles and Facebooks of the world take an unconstitutional role in deciding what speech and information should be online, it’s becoming clear much more is at stake than first meets the eye.
It’s also becoming apparent that there are some voices on the Right who are either deeply naïve and ignorant about what is at stake or they are in fact paid collaborators of the tech companies.
Also some discussion of the threat of the singularity, which is still more science fiction than actual at this point. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Tucker Carlson summarizes:
Some conservatives are leaving Twitter in protest.
As for myself, I’m just going to keep talking about the things they don’t want to talk about on Twitter (like Biden family corruption and fraud in the 2020 presidential election) until they kick me off.