A month ago, in "Social media's PC gulag," I described the unethical and intellectually dishonest censorship of the social media site Twitter. Twitter and Facebook, especially, are becoming more and more hostile to conservatives and libertarians. These are sites owned and managed by liberals, and if there is one thing liberals hate more than anything else, it is the free exchange of ideas. Thus, they have redefined all conservative and libertarian thought as "hate" and "abuse," which frees their mob to claim "harassment" whenever they see or even overhear any expression of opinion with which they disagree. Criticizing a liberal, even politely, on Facebook or Twitter opens to the door to having your account summarily closed. There is no real appeal process; there is no way to communicate with a human being; there is nothing you can do about it. Simply put, if you express opinions the libs consider politically incorrect, you will have a Facebook page or a Twitter account for as exactly as long as it takes them to notice you.
As I wrote on Jan. 13, There are no prominent liberals who have been punished by social media sites for expressing left-wing points of view. Not a single example has been offered publicly. Yet there are numerous examples of conservatives and libertarians being sanctioned, punished, banned, or otherwise harassed for doing nothing more than expressing opinions progressives do not like. People get a startling amount of their news these days from headlines on Facebook and Twitter but seldom read beyond those frequently misleading headlines. This means that popular culture is being driven left by a double standard. The left-wingers adore these double standards and never miss a chance to inflict their hypocrisy on those venues where they hold sway. Anyone who does not toe the liberal line will be harassed and suspended.
We've seen this play out countless times. ISIS recruits on Facebook, but it is conservative pages critical of Islam that are suspended. Liberals can say anything they want about conservatives on Twitter, but Twitter evidently removes hashtags from the "trending" list (like "#IslamIsTheProblem") when it does not approve of them. Oh, and the rape and death threats: Liberals absolutely adore making rape and death threats, most vocally and most often against prominent conservative women. But of course, we're told by the industry devoted to manufacturing feminist outrage – the industry that is constantly whining that absolutely everything is sexist, misogynist and offensive, from video games to math and science programs to men sitting with their legs too far apart on public transportation – that it is liberal, politically correct women who suffer from abusive behavior online.
Except that this is a lie.
No, women aren't being hounded off the Internet by a tidal wave of "abuse" and "harassment." In fact, Pew research indicates that men suffer more harassment online than women do. Apparently, they just don't whine about it as much, or let it stop them from using the Internet. I'm going to extrapolate here and say that this refusal to be driven from the Internet by harassment includes the unfair treatment conservatives and libertarians receive on the Web's most prominent social media platforms. I don't recall of a liberal political channel ever being suspended from YouTube for its liberal content, but firearms channels regularly receive harassment and suspensions (most notably the popular Hickok45 channel, which was suspended and restored recently). And so it goes, with conservatives and libertarians forever policing themselves, wondering when the content of their opinions will be declared in violation of Terms of Service, while liberals may almost literally say and do anything they please.
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Twitter is exacerbating the problem by turning to an external company to "combat abusive tweeting." According to CNET's Lance Whitney, "Several abusive incidents have grabbed the public's attention in the past couple of years. Last February, writer Lindy West revealed that people had created a Twitter account in the name of her deceased father to make crude comments about her. Back in August 2014, Zelda Williams temporarily deleted the Twitter app from her phone due to tormenting tweets that followed the suicide of her father, Robin Williams." One presumes other "abuse" is similarly vile, but is this "harassment"? Is it even something that a social media site should police?
The liberals and social-justice whiners have redefined as "harassment" literally anything critical of their opinions. Every one of these social media sites has a "block" function that lets you screen out the posts of people you dislike, or whom you find "abusive." Hell, social justice puke Wil Wheaton maintains a list of thousands of blocked users and encourages others to subscribe to the same list, preemptively blocking anyone Wheaton does. This is done to – and social media sites are now enacting polices that – prevent wilting, couch-fainting liberals from ever seeing an opinion they might find upsetting. So delicate are their sensibilities that even seeing something offensive and then blocking the user who posted it is too much for them. They insist that the social media landscape be re-engineered to free them from the awful, awful burden of free exchange.
If social media were truly a free market, the solution would be to create an uncensored social media site not policed for political correctness. But with Facebook and Twitter so much a part of our national entertainment and news infrastructure online, is that truly a viable option? And must we simply resign ourselves to the liberals establishing de facto thoughtcrime in all online venues they control?
The future of online social interaction remains to play out. Either the ideals of free speech and the free exchange of ideas will win out, or we will accept that social venues that are supposed to permit free exchange are instead censored by left-wing thought police. No matter what happens, we will have seen yet more proof of one simple fact: Liberals hate free speech. They long ago discarded any pretense of feeling otherwise.
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