Free Republic

Facebook and Google increasingly influence Congress as the social media giants censor conservative and alternative voices, dominate the Internet, and violate Americans’ privacy. Facebook announced on Thursday that they have banned several conservative personalities such as Infowars host Alex Jones, Infowars contributor and YouTube personality Paul Joseph Watson, journalist and activist Laura Loomer, and Milo Yiannopoulus. The social media giant also banned Louis Farrakhan from its platforms. Facebook said that they banned these personalities because they were “dangerous.” Amid calls for greater regulation of social media companies’ potential anticompetitive behavior, censorship of conservative and alternative voices, and privacy violations, Facebook...

Your free speech rights can be violated by nearly anyone, as can your right to freely associate. But though almost anyone can violate your rights, no one may do so. And the modern idea has been that governments ought to protect our rights. Unfortunately, politically-motivated mobs have recently decided that they “are” government, or that they get to redefine our rights . . . by violating them. And governments and other established authorities have not been consistently coming to our aid. Last month, libertarian-conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulis went into the Churchill Tavern in New York to dine with a fellow...