via theothermccain:
“The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.”
Something very similar is at work in the operations of Big Tech, acting as a political arms of the Biden administration. Using the pretext of suppressing “misinformation,” Facebook and other platforms are identifying and silencing the administration’s opponents and, even though this is happening in full view of anyone paying attention, you’re not going to know anything about it if you get your news from CNN, MSNBC or one of the broadcast network troika of NBC/ABC/CBS.In fact, the liberal media are engaged in “fact-checking” that labels reporting about this censorship as (you guessed it) “misinformation.”
Politico reported last week that the Democratic National Committee is going to “work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages.”
Repeat: “text messages.”
The DNC is going to censor your text messages?
A lot of people (among them our friends at Gateway Pundit) were startled by this news, but then the Thought Police “fact-checkers” at USA Today went to work to label this as “misinformation,” explaining that what they were actually talking about was mass-delivery text messages sent via software platforms (known as SMS APIs), the kind of messages you get from political campaigns when you sign up to get text alerts. So the White House is not monitoring your private text messages, but instead is trying to silence groups like Turning Point USA, which sends its members alerts like, “Biden is sending goons DOOR-TO-DOOR to make you take a Covid-19 vaccine. Sign the petition to: No medical raids in America.”
Let us stipulate that a certain amount of hyperbole is to be expected in the messages that political organizations deliver to their followers. How is what TPUSA does any different than what the DNC itself sends to its supporters? If you’re signed up for such text-message alerts from any political outfit, you have volunteered to receive this stuff, and why is it that the effort to suppress “misinformation” is only directed toward opponents of the Biden administration, not its supporters?
It’s the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 all over again.
No, wait — that’s hyperbole, and perhaps even “misinformation,” but my point is that the Biden administration’s behavior is comparable to what the Adams administration was attempting to do, to suppress the publication of material deemed “dangerous” to the public interest.
This is a First Amendment violation, and the fact that the government is pressuring private companies to do it means that you can’t plead the “it’s a private company” exception.
Related: Defund the Thought Police: Psaki Admits Facebook, Twitter are State Actors.
h/t Glenn