“BuT iT’s A pRiVaTe CoMpAnY! ThE fIrSt AmEnDmEnT dOeSn’T aPpLy!!!
Say, remember all those folks defending social media censorship when Twitter and Facebook started banning conservatives?
“They’re private companies; they can do what they want! The First Amendment only applies to government, not to private companies!”
Yup. Good times.
But what happens when said “private company” does a little government censorship by proxy?
Today it was reported that Facebook is censoring community groups that are organizing protests against state government’s Wuhan Panic overreach.
And why is Facebook censoring them?
Did Facebook just do it on a whim because “they’re a private company; they can do what they want?”
No. Facebook was “instructed” to do it.
In other words, the governments of Nebraska, California, and New Jersey can’t infringe on their citizens right to peaceably assemble and “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” So they got Facebook to do it for them.
So much for being a private company.
Now, this kind of government censorship by proxy isn’t new to Facebook or Twitter. It’s exactly what these American social media companies are doing at the behest of totalitarian regimes like China.
If China doesn’t want video of the Hong Kong protests showing up on Facebook, well, Facebook dutifully bans them.
If China doesn’t want those videos showing up on Twitter, Twitter willingly complies and shuts them down.
I guess these state governments figure, “Hey, they do it for China. So why not us?”
You’d be surprised how many people are actually defending this government censorship by proxy. And they’re using the exact same “They’re a private company; they can do what they want” argument to defend Facebook letting state governments have a say in what appears on this “private company’s” site.
But once this supposed “private company” chooses to censor at the behest of the government, that argument flies out the window.
And it’s just the the constitutional implications of this that are mind boggling to me. Though, that’s enough in and of itself.
Government censorship by proxy is also a monstrously stupid and shortsighted move.
Are these guys completely clueless about the nature of humans?
You push us and we will push back.
That’s not just the human nature. It’s nature in general. Hell, it’s science. It’s Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
For every action, there is an equal, opposite reaction.
You’d think the so-called “party of science” would comprehend that.
Do these idiots in New Jersey, California and Nebraska really think getting Facebook to engage in a little government censorship by proxy will be met with no pushback? Are they really that obtuse?
It isn’t enough that these state governments are imposing draconian orders on their citizens. Now they want to shut them up for speaking out against these orders.
And they really think Americans are just going to lie down and take it?
Man, they did not think this through.
And it is so going to backfire on them.
