Cancelling is one the more popular words these days. People love to say they got “cancelled.” The whole boycotting advertisers, teams, or people for some kind of political disagreement is as old as time itself. With the rise of social media in the past decade, the deplatforming of people off of social media is a hot button.
The big news of Donal Trump being kicked off of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram had the Trumpsters up in arms. They were screaming about denying Trump his 1st amendment right of free speech. Well, that is wrong. Trump has every right to say what he wants. The constitution doesn’t say anything about tweeting. Like it or not, Twitter and Facebook are private companies and can do what they want with who is on their sites. I think we all get that. Where the real problems come is the hypocrisy that exists in their decision making.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that he removed Donald Trump’s Twitter page because he “incited violence” and had “encouraged” the violence at the Capitol last week. I’m not here to debate whether he did or didn’t do that. Quite honestly, it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of the argument.
Just using Twitter as a simple example, I can personally say I’ve had at least 3 people wish death upon me in the last year. I don’t have the proof of it, but which one of us hasn’t had some troll cross the line and advocate for our murder. It’s all nonsense on there, but if we are all going to play by the same rules, shouldn’t all who incite violence be removed? As a matter of fact, I personally saw several elected officials cheering on the violence of the spring/summer. Isn’t that the same thing? A little consistency would go a long way. The hypocrisy is obvious. Twitter is a cesspool of filth in this world.
I’ll give you one example of an active account on Twitter. The well-known anti-gay hate group, Westboro Baptist Church has an active account at this moment. Some may say, “But Blind Owl, that’s a church, its different!” I don’t particularly care. Twitter can’t plead ignorance on this one. The “church” has a Twitter handle of (Their language not mine) “@GodHatesFagsWBC.” That’s a tad obvious in my opinion. Dorsey clearly doesn’t like Trump, which is fine, that’s his right, but at least call it what it is. Don’t try to mask it as some kind of moral victory to get Trump off Twitter. It’s just bias.
But wait, there’s more.
Now we get to those who have already been removed from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For years, I heard the right whining about how biased the social media companies are. And conversely, I heard the left saying, “well go make your own then.” So they did. As dumb as it is in my opinion, we saw the creation of “republican Twitter.” This is known as Parler and it placated the right wingers about the bias of social media. This was all well and good, until after the storming of the Captiol, companies like Google and Apple removed Parler from their app stores. They said it was because “the plans for the attack were made there.”
This is 100% true. I am more than sure that there was some planning done on the social media platform. But nobody can tell me that there wasn’t at least some planning done on Twitter, Facebook or whatever other social media sites that Google and Apple support. That is simply an impossibility. Not to mention, the probability that at least a few murders have been planned on Facebook in its existence. That paired with the multitude of scams that have been perpetrated on Twitter and Facebook. From the Nigerian Prince scam using Gmail addresses or Apple tech support scams, these companies don’t have a moral leg to stand on. In fact I can guarantee there is at least one hate group that has an app out there.
All I’m saying here is that this is a very slippery slope. These titans of the tech world are flexing their muscles right now, but when people smell blood, they don’t stop. Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey will be shocked to know that the cancel gun will be pointed at them soon enough. I mean look at 2016. People were calling for Facebook to be shut down due to their spreading of fake news and blamed for the election of Donald Trump in the first place.
The first amendment is a beautiful thing. You have every right to say whatever you want. That being said, I have every right to tell you how dumb you are for saying it. But nobody can say that this whole thing doesn’t scare you just a little bit. Who knows what they’ll be coming for you next…
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