Americans at the mercy of State-sanctioned censorship
UPDATE: AMAZON MUZZLES PARLER (Earlier story below) — “Sunday at midnight Amazon will be shutting off all of our servers in an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet. There is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on the internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch. We prepared for events like this by never relying on Amazon’s proprietary infrastructure and building bare metal products.” — Parler CEO John Matze
EARLIER STORY
Big Tech has dealt a blow to free speech on a scale that’s perilously close to what exists in North Korea, Iran, China and Russia, where the only news the people are allowed to read is controlled by the State.
In the America of the 2020s, the State and Big Tech are one and the same.
Dictatorships start by shutting down free speech. And America’s First Amendment is hanging by a thread.
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ―
After the madness of recent events in Washington, I had hoped to stay away from politics, but this is too important to ignore.
POLITICALLY MOTIVATED
Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech companies contributed millions of dollars to get the Democrat Party elected. They banned all negative news about Biden, including connections with China and the Ukraine, and as always, allowed all reports that trashed Trump.
Whether Trump deserved to be trashed or not, is not the point. Social media platforms, the last hope of free speech, have banned countless thousands of Trump supporters. Note: More than 74 million Americans voted for Trump. Trump has been banned from Twitter for life.
This issue goes far beyond Trump and his supporters. We are now all at the mercy of censorship.
“Silencing people, not to mention the President of the U.S., is what happens in China not our country.” — Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley
LAND OF THE FREE IS DEAD
America is now little different than State-controlled dictatorships. Throughout the years citizens of those oppressed countries came to America for freedom and the right to express their opinions without being thrown in prison or executed.
They might as well stay where they are under the heel of dictatorship and censorship, because the America they dreamed of moving to no longer exists.
America is now a nation that allows Iran’s “Death to America” Ayatollah and several other dictatorial regimes that threaten genocide and the death of homosexuals to continue to have unfettered Twitter accounts, but bans its own President.
This is almost unbelievable. A nightmare. Except it’s real.
PARLER ‘UNCENSORED’ — FOR NOW
Meanwhile, thousands of conservative social media users who have been banned from Facebook and Twitter have turned to a new ‘uncensored’ platform called Parler. Trump himself joined on Friday.
And immediately, Google and Apple banned all access to Parler apps. It never ends. This very article would be censored if I tried to post it on Facebook or Twitter.
Parler, an alternative to Twitter launched two years ago, saw a major spike in traffic Friday night after Twitter permanently banned Trump and the app ban was announced.
Parler has become the main social media site for conservatives and Trump supporters. Despite the ban on the app, it is still available on mobile browsers, but a Parler head said the app ban could break the company.
In that case there would be no outlet for ‘alternative’ voices. Liberal Big Tech would control everything.
This is a bigger problem that hating Trump and his supporters. This is the end of our right to speak our minds and express our thoughts and write the truth. This is Big Tech-Big Brother controlling our minds.
THE FEAR FACTOR
Anyone who reads this post, including all the Trump haters, and doesn’t speak out against censorship is afraid. Afraid if they publicly write or say anything condemning it, they too will be silenced.
That’s what Big Tech/Big Government/Big Brother is counting on — Fear. They are so big and powerful and we are so small and weak that they know we will be afraid to protest their control over what we write and what we say and even what we think. We must not give in to fear.