Our Brave New World of tech has brought us a cowardly new world of censorship. Today you can find one of your own social media posts taken down, and even find your account suspended or terminated, for content that strays from woke ideology or simply doesn’t conform to the elite’s narrative.
The worst offenders are Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, though pretty much any tech giant outlet is guilty to some extent. The issue is clouded somewhat by the “expert” commentary you’ll routinely hear that says, “Hey, this isn’t a free speech issue, because these are private companies.”
That’s entirely incorrect. It isn’t a First Amendment issue, because the Constitution protects us only from our government’s actions. (Though with the recent admission by the Biden administration that they’re working with the tech giants to identify such “misinformation,” we may well be straying into overt Constitutional violations.) But free speech isn’t confined only to what the First Amendment says; we should all be rightly concerned and should push back when private entities start policing us for “correct” thoughts and opinions too.
For that reason, this shouldn’t be a partisan thing. No matter what your politics, you should be very concerned. If you don’t fancy being silenced, you sure as hell shouldn’t be sitting idly by while someone on the other side is.
But how do you push back? I’ve been pretty extreme, having canceled my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts over their perfidy in this regard. I’ve been tempted to do the same with LinkedIn, but for the same reason many of you remain on those other platforms, I’ve kept my LinkedIn account: because I find it too valuable. So I’ve been wracking my brain over how to materially signal my displeasure at that platform’s increasing intolerance.
And I finally hit on it. I’m blocking those responsible. If they’re going to restrict or eliminate some of my friends’ abilities to share their opinions, I can do the same to them. I’ve already blocked LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky on my account, and now I’m going to systematically do the same with all the other C-suite execs there, as well as those at Microsoft (their owner), and all the members of its Board of Directors. They’ll be allowed no forum on my personal feed; I’ll be treating them with the same level of contempt that they obviously have for us ordinary users of their platform.
I believe all the social media platforms have the “block” feature in some form or fashion. So if you value free speech, free inquiry, and open debate, yet you find any of those platforms too personally valuable to jettison, then please research the people in power at each one you’re on, and block them.
It’s exactly what they’ve earned, and what they richly deserve.
You make a good and valid point in this post, Jim. But you do lose something, which I think is valuable, with your action of just walking away from these platforms. You lost the ability to offer a counterpoint to all the hatespeak that proliferates on social media. Because, let’s face it, only a fraction of it is censored. Myself, I choose to stick around and fight. Actually I just did a post yesterday supporting this freedom of speech issue. I agree that censorship is a wrong thing to do. But at the same time so is deliberately misleading people to get them to believe things that aren’t true. Especially if those people don’t have a highly developed ability to know lies when they see them. America has proven that there are literally tens of millions of them in their own country. I will publish this post here on BizCat, so you can read it if you are interested.
Jim, I appreciate your comments and your kind feedback. I’ve chosen to let other platforms go and focus on LinkedIn because it has far more value to me than all the rest combined. But I’ll take your words to heart, and perhaps re-engage elsewhere down the road.
Best regards!