Freedom Fighters, Rights Groups, criticise BigTech for Totalitarian Behaviour
Published:
US President Donald Trump will address the unprecedented attack on himself and his supporters launched by the several BigTech firms last week in a special message later on Monday.
SPECIAL REPORT
It is expected that US President will state that social media lost its immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, behaving as censors rather than publishers of the platforms with unconstrained popular access.
It means that they are open to the limited but significant liability that publishers bear for the content they publish.
The BigTech behaviour was criticised by freedom fighters who are experiencing, every day, not only bans and blockages but heavy fines and years of imprisonment by the political censors. Russian opposition activists, including politicians and journalists, harshly criticised US Big Tech’s attack on the American Conservatives that resulted in booting President Trump and many of his supporters.
Among the critics was Putin’s enemy number one, who is recovering in Germany from the poisoning with the Novichok, the chemical weapon of mass destruction by the Russian intelligence FSB.
Replace the name of Trump for Navalny, and you will get an 80 per cent verbatim explanation of Kremlin for a ban on my name on Russian television and my participation in elections, Mr. Navalny stated.
Putin's enemy has called unreliable the Twitter explanation that Mr. Trump and his followers breached the social media rules.
He explained that he received death threats every day on his account, and Twitter does not impose any ban on these users. Mr. Navalny also emphasised that the so-called troll manufacturing plant, a massive disinformation effort sponsored by Kremlin, existed both on Facebook and Twitter. He also stressed that authoritarian states are using Twitter.
The Russian opposition leader has warned that the BigTech created a precedent, which Kremlin would utilise in the future.
Every time they would need to ban someone, they would say, you see, it is a global practice even Trump has been blocked, Mr. Navalny stated. The Russian journalists with links to opposition also expressed their concern.
Mr. Navalny called on BigTech to pursue transparent procedures regarding their decision on the ban that would involve a public committee and ensure that anyone could appeal.
We need to know the names of Commission members and understand how it functions and how we can appeal, the dissident stressed.
Freedom is for everyone or no-one
Freedom is for everyone or no-one, said a popular host of shows on the Ekho Moskvy, a radio station, that enjoys a margin of freedom although owned by Kremlin-controlled Gazprom conglomerate.
The American Civil Liberties Union, an organisation which often sues Christian and Conservatives, on Friday raised concerns about social media platforms banning users.
We understand the desire to permanently suspend him now, but it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions — especially when political realities make those decisions easier, said Kate Ruane, ACLU senior legislative counsel, in a statement.
Big Tech’s battle with President Trump has become an all-out war on free speech, Republican critics said Sunday after social media banished the president and his supporters from the Internet platforms.
Amazon, Apple, Google, Reddit, Shopify and Twitter removed accounts of Mr. Trump and scores of his supporters.
Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, said liberals were using the attack on the U.S. Capitol to “not just erase the president [but] erase everybody” who supported him. The left has decided this is an opportunity to destroy the right. So, if you ever voted for Donald Trump, if you ever supported anything he did, you are just as guilty as the people who went into that Capitol, Mr. Rubio said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
We’re now living in a country where four or five companies, unelected, unaccountable, have the power, a monopoly power, to decide, We’re going to wipe people out, we’re going to just erase them from any sort of digital platform.
Twitter statements unreliable and politically motivated
For many observers Twitter explanation for its totalitarian over-reach were unreliable and politically motivated.
In since-deleted tweets posted to @POTUS, Mr. Trump’s federal government account, the president announced that he was pursuing alternatives to Twitter.
“We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we … also look at the possibilities of building our own platform in the near future,” Mr. Trump said from @POTUS on Twitter. “We will not be SILENCED! Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH.”
The president also said he was considering building his own platform but did not provide specifics.
Twitter’s extensive purge of its users was not limited to Mr. Trump.
Prominent political voices and public officials reported losing thousands of followers in a few hours.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted an image claiming his personal account lost 19,500 followers and his government account dropped 36,200 followers.
Meanwhile, the Twitter following of President-elect Joseph R. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris grew by tens of thousands, per Mr. Pompeo.
Silencing speech is dangerous. It’s un-American, Mr. Pompeo said from his personal Twitter account. Sadly, this isn’t a new tactic of the Left. They’ve worked to silence opposing voices for years. We cannot let them silence 75M Americans, he wrote.
He compared Twitter’s actions to the heavy censorship under the Chinese Communist Party.
As the banishment unfolded, some prominent pro-Trump Twitter users such as conservative commentator Mark Levin announced that they were quitting the platform in protest and moving to Parler.
Apple, Google, and Amazon also took actions to stop Parler, an anti-Big Tech social media platform that touts its commitment to free speech.
Google suspended Parler from its Google Play Store, Apple removed Parler from its App Store, and Amazon’s web-hosting service booted the Parler website altogether.
Google’s decision to deplatform Parler was made out of a concern for “user safety,” said a Google spokesperson, who added that the company’s policies require apps displaying user-generated content to have moderation policies for “egregious” material.
All developers agree to these terms and we have reminded Parler of this clear policy in recent months, a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
We’re aware of continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the U.S. We recognize that there can be reasonable debate about content policies and that it can be difficult for apps to immediately remove all violative content, but for us to distribute an app through Google Play, we do require that apps implement robust moderation for egregious content, the company said.
Parler founder John Matze informed that the app will be available on Tuesday after short technical pause today.
He called the Google actions “anti-competitive behaviour” and urge users and supporters to send an email to their Congressmen. He recommended Parler users the Android-based phones which also carry risk of being censored. But it will have to do until Linux phones are finally ready, he added.
BigTech left-owned all-out attack against the world's Conservatives
It looked like BigTech is planning to introduce a gigantic worldwide censorship which will involve operating systems, apps, software, social media and browsers to introduce mechanism of cutting out, erasing and banning all of the non-leftist users.
Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker wrote on her company’s blog that deplatforming Mr. Trump online was not enough and tech companies needed to develop tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation. Mozilla created the Firefox web browser.
The answer is not to do away with the Internet, but to build a better one that can withstand and gird against these types of challenges, Mr. Baker wrote.
His words should not be taken lightly since Mr Bakers' firm sacrificed its best minds in the name of an ideology in the past. During the debate on the so-called gay marriage several best technicians and designers left Mozilla after the firm introduced Stalinist-like ideological discipline.
With such a message issued by tech Stalinist, it became clear that the only way to respond to this unprecedented attack of the Left on free speech is to create a parallel tech infrastructure that would allow for independent use of all of the services allowing to launch apps, build and host websites, and uncensored communication.