Posted on 01/30/2018 11:00:15 AM PST by Kaslin
Having been one of the early targets of social media censorship on Facebook, YouTube et al, I have advocated for anti-trust action against these bullying behemoths. It is good to see establishment outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and National Review coming to the same conclusion, or at least asking the same questions.
Just this week, Facebook launched its latest of many attacks on my news site, the Geller Report. It labeled my site as "spam" and removed every Geller Report post -- thousands upon thousands of them, going back years – from Facebook. It also blocked any Facebook member from sharing links to the Geller Report. The ramping up of the shutting-down of sites like mine is neither random nor personal. The timing is telling. The left is gearing up for the 2018 midterm elections, and they mean to shut down whatever outlet or voice that helped elect President Trump, the greatest upset in left-wing history.
In fighting this shutdown, we had to go back to the drawing board in our lawsuit against these social media giants. The basis of our suit was challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) under the First Amendment, which provides immunity from lawsuits to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, thereby permitting these social media giants to engage in government-sanctioned censorship and discriminatory business practices free from legal challenge.
Facebook and Google take in roughly half of all Internet ad revenue. According to the Wall Street Journal:
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The actions of Facebook and Google clearly show that when they say “net neutrality” they do not think it means true “net neutrality” to them, just everyone else.
"When they came for the Jews I did nothing because I am not a Jew..."
I would think that Free Republic, and we all, have a vested interest in supporting this suit.
"The only way for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing..."
I’ve been advocating for years. Take away all their IP, Patents and Copyrights regarding methods and business models and insubstantial products. Make them free and available to all and let them deal with the competition.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
I generally agree with her, but *ANY* such precedent should be viewed in light of how another Democrat administration would use it against FR and other places.
Never censorship, NEVER government interference, of any kind, with any media. No good comes of any sort of regulation of information.
Did Soros pay for this article?
As a practical matter nearly all political speech these days takes place on the internet.
To the extent that a handful of companies control the internet, the First Amendment can be rendered toothless.
She is right.
The world would be a better place without FB.
Yes, they should be treated as public utilities such as the telephone system. There should be no suppression of speech other than the limits set by the U.S. Federal government.
God Bless you Ms. Geller. Please keep fighting for the American way freedom and liberty. The right is still the resistance and the left is still the oppressors and suppressors of freedom and liberty, no matter how they try to rebrand themselves.
They own the site, don’t they? While I detest their action in blocking Geller, isn’t it their right to do so?
To the left, the world would be a better place without FR. Careful what we wish for; we might get it cutting both ways!
I doubt that he is a friend of hers and she of him
I'm with Fhios here. It appears that they got special treatment from the government to make their business work. We're not supposed to be in favor of that. They have abused that privilege and I think we are entitled to a review of this Section 230 deal. If they want to make the claim that they can't avoid suppression of (always Conservative) voices, then we can start to think about undoing their special deal.
So you are against Google and their progeny because they certainly decide what news is worthy and it is always liberals that are worthy.
They control commerce too by the way they filter out queries. How many people wade through millions of responses to a query? Google decides who goes to the top and those top 10 will be the ones that get clicked on.
There’s a market solution: Leave them behind. Ad revenue won’t support You-Twit-Face if no one is providing eyeballs. This really isn’t the government’s business.
All conservative Americans should abandon Facebook. Open a competing social media format if necessary, but allowing the FedGov to once again exceed it’s constitutional authority just because it’s our “ox being gored” is not good policy.
Just as it is your right to refuse service in a restaurant. Oh wait you don't have that right.
“net neutrality” hobbles the potential competition to Google and Facebook.
They need to come up with a constitutionally sound argument that prevents private enterprises who are a monolopy from discriminating against viewpoints they disagree with. We wouldn’t want it to apply to FR, but we think it should apply to Google and Facebook. What law do we use? Antitrust? They are not competing against an entity, they are competing with their own customers. First Amendment? They are not a government entity.
It would probably take a law that defines discrimination to include political views, and applies a prohibition on discrimination to internet monopolies on communication systems used by a significant portion of the population. It clearly is interstate commerce, and another hook is that the internet was created by the US and its infrastructure is heavily involved with government.
I really wish it wasn’t the government’s business—I really do.
But Facebook and Google need to broken up into a million pieces—before we are unable to do so.
Capitalism is not a suicide pact.
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