There is no free speech on Twitter.
Technically, there’s no expectation of free speech on any privately owned social media site, but when a site charges money for access to various services (advertising, promotion of tweets, etc.) it is not just a privately owned website. It is a business open to the public, which creates the expectation of equal accommodation for all customers. In a world where refusing to bake a cake for a “gay” wedding will result in your business being fined and sued into bankruptcy, denying service to a customer on the basis of his or her political beliefs ought not be legal or acceptable. Yet that is precisely what happens on Twitter all the time.
The most recent victim of Twitter’s biased management is Milo Yiannopoulos, technology editor at Breitbart and an outspoken pro-Trump firebrand. It was only a matter of time before Yiannopoulos was banned; the site “unverified” his account a while back to punish him for too effectively enraging liberals. These punishments are always doled out under the heading of “targeted harassment.” Twitter loves to punish conservatives for “targeted harassment” because the term has no real definition. The one the management at Twitter seems to use is, “Made a liberal angry.” All you have to do to be guilty of this violation, then, is say something a liberal doesn’t like.
There is no way to speak to a human being at Twitter, no way to appeal a suspension or permanent ban, and no way to recoup the financial losses of having a popular Twitter account with hundreds of thousands of followers summarily deleted. Combine this with the fact that there is nothing that liberals hate more than freedom of speech and it’s a formula for constant no-platforming. Liberals love to redefine all speech they don’t like has “harassment” and “hate speech.” They are, arguably, redefining all conservative and libertarian opinions – in other words, opinions that are not politically “liberal” – as morally wrong. This leaves only their position as the only “valid” one and justifies any denial of service to non-liberals on the grounds of fighting “hate.”
So what was Yiannopoulos’ crime, specifically? He said something a liberal didn’t like. He didn’t harass her. He didn’t abuse her. He simply disagreed with her. “Her,” in this case, is actress and comedienne Leslie Jones, one of the stars of the 2016 “Ghostbusters” remake. The New York Times characterized Yiannopoulos’ posts as “a campaign of prolonged abuse against Leslie Jones.” Remember, though, that “prolonged abuse,” in the eyes of any liberal on the Internet, is simply getting the better of them in an argument.
“The episode raises an important question,” sniffs the Times’ Katie Rogers. “If one of Hollywood’s most visible actresses can be publicly harassed and pushed to the point of wanting to leave Twitter, while pleading with the platform to make changes, what will it take to stop the abuse?”
Rogers goes on to claim that Twitter’s response to “abuse” of high-profile individuals has been “criticized as wholly ineffective.” To translate that from liberal to English, a lot of left-wingers have been upset that Twitter hasn’t banned every single conservative or libertarian who has ever made a liberal look stupid on social media. It isn’t for lack of trying, though. Twitter has a long history of banning conservatives whom they claim have somehow violated Twitter’s rules. No specifics are ever provided, no means to fight these bans is ever offered, and the message, repeatedly, to conservatives is that they can expect no parity of service or public accommodation on a micro-blogging site run by liberals.
Facebook is just is bad. In recent weeks, Facebook has stepped up its no-platforming of conservatives and libertarians, closing down still more pages run by non-liberals and characterizing as “hate” or “harassment” any and all criticism of liberal sacred cows. Be it criticism of Muslim “rape-fugees” or statements critical of any liberal politician, all you have to do to end up in Facebook’s ultra-liberal sights is express an opinion the left-wing management doesn’t share. It’s already come out that Facebook routinely censors conservative-friendly news stories. Should we be surprised, then, that liberals routinely abuse their power to deny public service to conservatives?
When a conservative denies service to a liberal, it makes national news – such as the tow-truck driver who refused to tow a woman who had a Bernie Sanders sticker on her rear bumper. That tow-truck driver was rightly condemned nationwide for letting politics interfere in his business. We’ve already established that conservatives can’t deny service to liberals without losing their businesses (“Bake that cake, you bigot!”), but Muslim cashiers can refuse to check out customers with bacon or liquor. Muslim bakeries won’t bake that “gay” cake, but nobody cares. And hey, if you own any restaurant and you want to deny service to cops, apparently there will be no government reprisals for doing so (if the rash of stories about denying cops service at fast food joints is any indication).
Milo Yiannopoulos’ fate was sealed on Twitter the moment Twitter founder Jack Dorsey reached out to Leslie Jones to speak with her privately. Yiannopoulos was banned shortly thereafter. At issue seems to be the fact that people who weren’t Yiannopoulos said mean things to Jones. Liberals go insane when they see or hear opinions they dislike. Social media has been problematic for them for that very reason. By definition, when you express opinions on social media, people may say unpleasant things to you. For a liberal, nothing is more offensive, and if this occurs on any platform where they hold even nominal control, they will stop at nothing to silence you.
Yiannopoulos is only the latest example of liberals’ hatred of free speech online. He is the latest victim of the left’s hypocrisy when it comes to refusing service to the public, too. If conservatives can expect no parity of service, if one set of rules applies to liberals and another to those liberals’ hate, it is only a matter of time before society accepts this double standard as “normal.” Nothing would please brittle, hate-filled libs more than to cede them ownership of social media.
Media wishing to interview Phil Elmore, please contact [email protected].
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