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Trump: ‘Very dangerous’ to trust Facebook, Twitter

Blast comes as social-media giants face flood of censorship charges

WND Staff By WND Staff
Published August 20, 2018 at 6:12pm
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President Trump speaks at his first State of the Union address on Jan. 30, 2018 (Photo: screenshot)

President Trump speaks at his first State of the Union address on Jan. 30, 2018 (Photo: screenshot)

President Trump, who has been loud and direct in his criticism of social-media companies and their censorship of conservatives, says it’s “very dangerous” to trust companies like Facebook and Twitter with the content on their own platforms.

It was in an interview with Reuters that he made the comment.

And it came as the social-media giants face increasing oversight from Congress, which wants to police foreign propaganda, Reuters said.

CNBC said the comment was part of the “pressure” the president is putting on tech companies.

“Major social-media companies have for months been responding to claims that they censor conservatives. Trump last month called Twitter ‘discriminatory’ and accused the company of ‘shadow banning’ prominent Republicans by de-emphasizing certain accounts from search results,” the report said.

The furor escalated two weeks ago when Facebook, YouTube and Apple banned or restricted Alex Jones and his Infowars sites on the same day.

Reuters pointed out that Twitter and Facebook are privately owned, so they have the legal right to ban accounts they dislike.

But Congress has summoned representatives of the companies several times “to address claims of censoring conservatives,” the report said, and lawmakers have expressed concern that they have become monopolies and some have suggested turning them into public utilities.

The companies themselves have admitted left-wing political leanings.

Since January, WND has been documenting how the far-left “Internet Cartel” – primarily Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon – has been waging an unrelenting war against free speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. One key way to effectively fight back against what is increasingly being seen as a blatant attempt to shut down conservative, Christian, pro-Constitution news and opinion voices is to help them financially. You can support WND here.

WND reported last weekend that Trump was denouncing the censorship moves by Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Amazon and others.

Their targets have been Republican, conservative and other dissident independent media voices.

“Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices,” the president wrote in the first of several posts on Twitter. “Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won’t let that happen. They are closing down the opinions of many people on the RIGHT, while at the same time doing nothing to others.”

The president did not outline any specific steps his administration might take to protect the internet as a forum for all points of view.

“Too many voices are being destroyed, some good & some bad, and that cannot be allowed to happen,” he wrote. Who is making the choices, because I can already tell you that too many mistakes are being made. Let everybody participate, good & bad, and we will all just have to figure it out! Censorship is a very dangerous thing & absolutely impossible to police.”

He added: “If you are weeding out Fake News, there is nothing so Fake as CNN & MSNBC, & yet I do not ask that their sick behavior be removed. I get used to it and watch with a grain of salt, or don’t watch at all.”

In recent weeks, Jones has been banned from YouTube, Spotify, Facebook, Apple and Twitter.

More recently, Facebook blocked as “hate speech” videos by conservative talk-host and author Dennis Prager’s non-profit education site PragerU titled “Make Men Masculine Again” and “Where are the Moderate Muslims?”

After Facebook rejected a highly inspirational ad for a Republican congressional candidate that included images depicting her parents’ persecution under the Khmer Rouge communist regime in Cambodia, Twitter has followed up with its own ban. A backlash prompted by media coverage led to Facebook changing its mind last week and approve the ad by Elizabeth Heng, who is challenging incumbent Democrat Jim Costa for the 16th District seat in California’s Central Valley. But Twitter determined the ad is “ineligible to participate in the Twitter Ads program” because the content violates its ban on “that which is offensive, vulgar, or obscene.”

Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey denied claims his company is discriminating against users with conservative views in an interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter.

“Are we doing something according to political ideology or viewpoints?” he asked rhetorically. “We are not. … We do not look at content with regards to political viewpoint or ideology. We look at behavior. … I think we need to constantly show that we are not adding our own bias, which I fully admit is left, is more left-leaning.”

“It has become something of an epidemic,” said Joseph Farah, founder of WND, the first independent online news-gathering platform. created some 21 years ago. “While I have been warning about the increased and overt censorship by this ‘Speech Code Cartel’ for a long time, it’s becoming more obvious and part of an undeniable pattern that is chilling freedom of speech, freedom of the press and religious freedom.”

Farah has been chronicling the partisan and political and religious censorship almost daily through the month of August and calling on those who recognize the peril it represents to a free society to support the independent media with their prayers and urgent financial support.”

“We are rapidly plunging into an internet Dark Age that no longer reflects our culture’s political and spiritual values, but rather, shapes them as much as any other institution in history,” Farah says.

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