“There is no better evidence that big tech is out of control than the fact that they banned the sitting president of the United States earlier this year.”
-Donald J. Trump
#freespeechmatters 09.07.2021
Former President Donald Trump is once again making headlines and trending on liberal social media sites after declaring he will lead a lawsuit against Twitter, Facebook, and Google, who owns YouTube, for censorship. All three platforms removed him after he was accused of instigating the January 6 riots at the capitol. It is important to note that he was never charged with instigating violence or inciting a riot.
The lawsuit will be a class-action lead by Trump that he hopes will diminish the power liberal tech giants have granted themselves over the course of the past year. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which is owned by Google, removed Trump during his Presidency due to claims he made about the election being stolen. Now, all three platforms will have to answer for their crimes against humanity in court.
I disagree with legally requiring liberal tech platforms to host speech they disagree with. The requirement itself is in violation of the First Amendment because our right to free speech grants us the right to not speak. I’m unsure what precedent a legal decision would set if Trump is successful, but we shouldn’t be resorting to government force to achieve our freedom.
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube all had the legal right to remove Trump. Again, I do argue that this is part of their First Amendment right. However, they did violate the former President’s human rights by censoring his speech online. Censorship and silencing ideas is an extreme form of oppression. Oppression is a bubble that bursts into violence if unattended to for too long. These major platforms, in essence, are encouraging violence by silencing and censoring a targeted group of people. Just because something is legal does not make it right. We should be celebrating human rights, not applauding their demise.
Lastly, as we have seen with the lab leak theory, there is no benefit from censoring theories. Freedom of speech means we get to question our government. If the excuse for removing Trump from liberal social media is because he “falsely” claimed that the 2020 election was stolen, then they removed him for exercising his First Amendment right. The Amendment is literally there for us to be allowed to question our government without consequence. Furthermore, they treated the rigged election theory in the same manner they treated the lab leak theory. They didn’t disprove it; they dismissed it. They removed content that deviated from the dictated script. They created more curiosity and doubt than Trump’s claims ever did.
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