I am not a conservative, but I have a few conservative views.
I am not a liberal, but I have a few liberal views.
I consider myself to be a Constitutional libertarian (lower case l). I am registered as an independent (no party affiliation). I have absolutely no desire to have political ideals be decreed upon me. I am a free thinker. I like to read the original documentation (when available) and decide for myself.
Social media isn’t “public”, although all major social media outlets and/or their parent companies are publicly traded entities and allow the public to “join”. Free speech is guaranteed within the Constitution, but there are some caveats that apply. You cannot use “freedom of speech” as a Get Out Of Jail Free Card if you cause panic which results in injury or death, ie. yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Private property is, well, private. You have no expectations of “Freedom of Speech” if you’re on private property. Which social media is publicly traded and comprised of “the public”, it is not a public place, such as a local park, or the court house steps, or on any property owned by the government (that’s not otherwise secured for one reason or another).
Social media outlets have every right to ban whomever they wish from their platforms for whatever they choose. If they want to interpret “conservative speech” as “hate speech”, that’s their prerogative to do so. Rules are rules. I don’t like it, but I understand why they’re allowed to do it. I do have a problem in most of these cases where conservatives are being banned from social media such as Twitter and Facebook without knowing exactly what the rules are. It’s kinda hard to play the game without a set of rules to go by. These outlets are “flying by the seat of their pants” when it comes to the rulebook. They’re making things up as they go along, kinda like playing a kid’s game back in elementary school. If they begin to lose, they simply change the rules (rules that we don’t know or haven’t ever had the chance to read) to suit the situation.
As it stands, we are now so heavily engrossed in social media, moderators are dictating to the members of Facebook, what is allowed to be seen. This is stifling the conservative viewpoints. Again, it is perfectly legal to do so.
We are so wrapped up FACEBOOKTWITTER that we’ve lost touch with how to communicate with society in a broad way without having social media keeping us in touch. Most people used to read newspapers. Now, they mostly read the headlines that someone else shares. People used to have personal websites, free pages from Yahoo!, GeoCities, Excite, Fortunecity, Homstead, Angelfire, among others. We used Usenet for particular interests. Then along came “blogging”, which is still heavily used, but not by the average person. No, the average person uses Facebook and Twitter, along with Whatsapp, Instagram and a few others, to stay in touch with friends and family, and of course, the celebrities.
But what happens when one of your friends posts something, shares, something, that’s in conflict with an unknown rule on Facebook for “violating Facebook community standards”? What are ‘standards’, if they cannot be listed, compared and viewed? They’re arbitrary rules that someone applies based on their interpretation of something. What is that “something” and why can’t we, the members of the communities, be informed of the contents?
People are being silenced every day on social media. Not because something is actually threatening or legally libelous. They’re being silenced because of a perceived violation of a community standard that none of us have ever read. Doesn’t this frustrate you? It dang sure frustrates me.
Authority for authority’s sake is wrong. Just because someone possesses power over you, doesn’t mean they should exercise that power, yet, we’re allowing it to continue.
Recently, actor James Woods was banned (or placed in Twitter Jail) from Twitter. I started looking for more info about him, what his website URL is, where I could find him on other media, and it’s a relative black-hole. His entire conservative-speech-existence was basically on Twitter with a smidgling of Facebook thrown in here and there. He doesn’t have a website to fall back on and as far as I can see, he doesn’t have an account on Tumblr, he doesn’t post to Reddit, and I can’t find him on Codias.
So, by Twitter putting him in jail, he’s been effectively eliminated from broadcasting his thoughts. Supposedly, James Woods has an I.Q. above 180. Pretty dang impressive. But I think he may be a little inept when it comes to freedom of speech. In this day and age, you must have multiple avenues and occupy that space simultaneously in order to make sure you get your thoughts and opinions out there, if you really care that your thoughts and opinions really do get out there. Maybe he doesn’t care.
What is the answer? I seriously doubt there is an answer that will satisfy everyone, and probably nothing that will last the test of time. Facebook and Twitter are both failing in both of these regards. I anticipate that somewhere down the line, both Twitter and Facebook will simply say “enough is enough!” and end political speech on their platforms entirely. And, more likely than not, it will be too late to save the social media interaction that we’ve come to understand. We’ll see occasional posts from So-and-so about when they went on vacation last month, but the daily interaction and a “timeline” like we have now, won’t be filled with current updates, we’ll not get up-to-the-minute happenings from Soccer Moms and Baseball Dads. It’s beginning to get that way now. A lot of folks I know have abandoned social media. They don’t want to the see the political posts, or the drama or the “junk” as they call it. They only want to read the news from their preferred paper, watching their preferred t.v. news, they don’t want to hear opposition to the status quo.
My theory is, we’ll eventually go back to the way things were pre-social media (if any of you can remember). We may actually go back to inviting people over to the house for dinner so that we can hear about what’s been going on in their lives.
As for “freedom of speech” on the public street, court house, park, etc. it’s dying as well. We’re seeing more and more drive to “license” someone with a permit, to speak in a public place. Publicly funded institutions of higher learned (colleges/university) are also banning conservative speech, speakers, etc. on campus. The desire to squash the opposing point of view is mind boggling. I’ve read a ton of articles from conservative activists showing where they been banned from a multitude of public places. In Project Veritas, James O’Keefe has been chastised, ridiculed and undermined at every opportunity when he has come into contact with illegal activities of liberals and had video evidence to back him up, to the point that most liberals that know who he is, really think that his material was manufactured, because that’s what they’ve been told by the liberal media – and that’s simply not the case.
The United States Government is attempting to extradite and prosecute a non-U.S. citizen, Julian Assange, who from my recollection didn’t commit a crime on U.S. soil, for something that he cannot be found guilty of, but yet, he’s sought political asylum and until bribes were passed around, maintained that asylum for YEARS trying to stay away from U.S. custody. He did not hack into American systems to obtain the info, he was the recipient of the info and then publicized it. What would the current U.S. Government do to Woodward and Bernstein today? Based on the Government’s current record, Nixon would not have face impeachment, but Deep Throat would have been investigated and prosecuted for his involvement.
Things are not going according to plan. When this happen, rules change, rules become fluid, standards are no longer set-in-stone, they appear to be more like jello. Society cannot exist in such an unfair and dynamic world. Situations such as this are more like “controlled chaos”, rather than a Constitutional Republic. “…no one said things had to be fair.” I’ve heard that time and time again, but even so, when you have a set of rules, these rules should apply to everyone. And, having a set of rules, everyone should be able to read the rules. Otherwise, take your ball and go home.
