Lately the left has been out attacking free speech, labeling anything they don’t agree with as hate speech, and as a result are able to remove content that is disagreeable to their views through social media platform rules and guidelines. A recent example of this occurred with a Benghazi survivor criticizing the former president of the United States, Barrack Obama. The account belonging to the Benghazi hero was that of the CIA contractor and former Army Ranger, Kris Paronto, who was one of the men stationed during the Benghazi attacks on the American Embassy in Libya in 2012. Robert J. O’Neill, the Navy SEAL credited with killing Osama Bin Laden, was on twitter and shared a video showing Obama stating, “How hard can that be, saying that Nazis are bad?”, referencing to President Donald Trump. O’Neill captioned his post with “Nazis are bad. Now try saying ‘Radical Islam…’ “, showing his abhorrence for Islamic terrorist groups.
A far-left twitter page, ❎ 🇺🇸Secret Society Alumnus 🇺🇸 ❎, responded to O’Neill’s comment, with “He kinda killed Osama Bin Laden, so….”, clearly not knowing he was talking to the man that pulled the trigger when Bin Laden was assassinated. Paronto went on to share the conversation on his page, writing how ❎ 🇺🇸Secret Society Alumnus 🇺🇸 ❎ told the man who shot Bin Laden that it was Obama who was credited with the kill. Paronto’s post has now been removed by twitter staff. Another post, one that others suggest this was the real reason his account was suspended, was his response to Obama calling Benghazi a conspiracy.
The ban only lasted 12 hours, speculating twitter realizing that one of their moderators has deleted an account which did not go against their guidelines and rules, was suspended. Twitter has been known to suspend accounts of anyone who opposes their agenda, much like Facebook is notorious for doing. This practice, specifically on the Facebook platform, has been known as “Getting Zucked” satirically referencing Facebook’s owner, Mark Zuckerberg not approving of your content. This Thursday, Facebook announced their decision to close 810 accounts and pages due to “violations to their guidelines”. Some of these pages were large alternative media sites, and this has been labeled by many as these platforms “cleaning house” or purging undesirable content. This tactic happens when a select few of people do not agree with a post or page, they report the page/post, and the content gets reviewed by a staff member, in attempt to remove the content. With many Facebook offices, including their cooperate HQ, residing in California, a state primarily inhabited by leftists, it’s easy to see how their employees can potentially abuse their power and remove content the employee does not agree with. Twitter’s reporting process works in a very similar way, and in one case, ended with an employee from twitter calling for the platform to leak President Trump’s direct messages on his twitter page to the Department of Justice, without legal requirement to do so, which violates their own privacy terms and conditions.
Media platforms have been seen attempting to suppress ideas against the left. Along with the current US president, many other prominent republicans had their twitter accounts and posts generate less views with a tactic targeting prominent Republicans and other right wingers called “shadow banning”. Shadow banning is done by suppressing the targeted individual’s content, leading to their tweets being hidden from viewers, which restricts their content to current viewers and potentially new viewers. During July of 2018, Vice news reported that while several republican candidates were, in fact, hidden, the platform worked very well to find democratic pages. Twitter denied all accusations of targeting Republicans or other Rightist pages but did claim that due to a change in their search algorithm, a significant amount of rightist content was being hidden, and they were working to fix it. One key occurrence during an authoritarian/totalitarian dictatorship is censorship. With the left attempting to keep viewers from being able to see content, they undermine their opponents by bringing induced unawareness. If leftist ideas are to be the only ones presented on a platform, along with their views on their opponents, they bring about ignorance to their viewers, who see their way as the only way.
By Mike Jakob Klusa
Sources:
https://www.adweek.com/digital/facebook-reporting-guide/
https://www.dailywire.com/news/35639/twitter-suspends-benghazi-hero-mocking-obama-ryan-saavedra
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-law-enforcement-support#8
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