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Yes, they do censor us.

For many years now, conservatives and Christians have been claiming that there is indeed a very real leftist cancel culture out there; there is very real censorship taking place; and there is the Big State and Big Media and Big Tech that seem to be working overtime to suppress truth and information that is not to their liking.

Of course, whenever we bring this up, we are accused of being paranoid, of being nutters, of being conspiracy theorists, and so on. But what happens when the head honchos start admitting these very things? What happens when they come out and start to fess up – at least to some of their crimes and misdemeanours? Well, I suppose we can begin by saying, ‘We told you so!’

As many of you may now have heard, Meta Big Cheese Mark Zuckerberg has just come out and spilled the beans – and they are some very important beans indeed. Meta of course is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. In a letter addressed to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, he admitted to three big cases of this – things that we had been saying all along.

He admitted that:

• One, the Biden administration (and that also means the Harris administration) had been pressuring Facebook to censor Americans;
• Two, that Facebook itself was actively involved in censoring Americans; and
• Three, it did in fact seek to cover up the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Bowing to State Control

Wow. Again, our side has been saying all this for years now. But it is nice to see the guy finally admit to at least some of this. If you have not seen his 26 August letter, I present it to you in full:

Chairman Jordan:

I appreciate the Committee’s interest in content moderation on online platforms. As you are aware, Meta has produced thousands of documents as part of your investigation and made a dozen employees available for transcribed interviews. Further to our cooperation with your investigation, I welcome the opportunity to share what I’ve taken away from this process.

There’s a lot of talk right now around how the U.S. government interacts with companies like Meta, and I want to be clear about our position. Our platforms are for everyone — we’re about promoting speech and helping people connect in a safe and secure way. As part of this, we regularly hear from governments around the world and others with various concerns around public discourse and public safety.

In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree. Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.

I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today. Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.

In a separate situation, the FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election. That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply. It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story. We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again — for instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers.

Apart from content moderation, I want to address the contributions I made during the last presidential cycle to support electoral infrastructure. The idea here was to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely during a global pandemic. I made these contributions through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. They were designed to be non-partisan –spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities. Still, despite the analyses I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other. My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role. So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.

Respectfully,

Mark Zuckerberg Founder, Chairman & CEO Meta Platforms, Inc.

Hmm, so there you have it. Hopefully, soon we will get some of the other big players – be they Google, YouTube, lamestream media outlets, and political leaders – fessing up to more of this sordid and underhanded activity. It has been going on for years now, and it is high time it starts to get exposed.

As to Zuckerberg, there is much more to the man and his media empire than just these important revelations. One headline that appeared a day before his letter came out said this: “Elon Musk obliterates Zuckerberg: ‘He censors free speech, gives governments backdoor access’.” The article then says this:

“Zuck Bucks” wasn’t the only way the CEO of Meta was said to be aiding the establishment as Elon Musk fired off a scorching accusation related to free speech. For the side of the political divide keen on promoting spectrums, matters of what they found to be acceptable discourse have grown increasingly black and white. As Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France over accusations of failing to curb criminal use of the messaging app, a reminder about Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s platforms had Musk asserting why the Facebook co-founder got a free pass.

“Because he already caved into censorship pressure,” wrote the billionaire entrepreneur in response to the question, “WHY DON’T THEY ARREST MARK ZUCKERBERG FOR ENABLING CHILD PREDATORS?” The post included a CBS report on a lawsuit filed against Meta that had Musk sharing his own links to support the claim, “Instagram has a massive child exploitation problem, but no arrest for Zuck, as he censors free speech and gives governments backdoor access to user data.”

In 2023, as 33 state attorneys general launched a joint lawsuit against Meta alleging harmful effects on kids across its platforms, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez (D) had filed his one suit that alleged Meta “Enabled adults to find, message, and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos. “Meta and its CEO tell the public that Meta’s social media platforms are safe and good for kids,” read the filing. “The reality is far different. Meta knowingly exposes children to the twin dangers of sexual exploitation and mental health harm. Meta’s conduct has turned New Mexico children who are on its platforms into victims. Meta’s motive for doing so is profit.”

Along with Torrez’s claim that platforms like Instagram had become “prime locations for predators to trade child pornography and solicit minors for sex,” Musk had linked to the House Energy & Commerce Committee that had shared findings of a Wall Street Journal report asserting, “Instagram Connects Vast Pedophile Network.”

The takeaways from the report included allegations that Instagram’s algorithms were active in promoting illicit content, the facilitated connecting users in the market for child pornography through the allowance of explicit hashtags, allowed use of search terms of potentially harmful and illegal content and Meta admitted a failure to combat inappropriate content while not enforcing their policies.

Durov Arrested

Since Telegram’s Pavel Durov was mentioned above, let me briefly discuss him. George Christensen had this to say about his arrest:

What does it say about the state of free speech when a Western nation arrests the founder of one of the few platforms that refuses to bow to government censorship? That’s precisely what happened when French authorities detained Telegram CEO Pavel Durov at Le Bourget Airport on the weekend (Saturday, 24 August). His crime? Refusing to turn his platform into yet another tool for government surveillance and censorship.

He continues:

Telegram has long been the Wild West of social media, a platform where people can speak freely without fear of Big Tech’s heavy-handed moderation. Sure, there’s some chaos—just as there is in the streets of Paris—but let’s be honest: there’s far less vice and criminal activity on Telegram than you’d find in some of the world’s most “civilised” cities. Yet, despite the French government’s claims about tackling crime, this arrest reeks of something far more sinister—a blatant attempt to send a message to anyone daring to support free speech.

And there’s more to this than just censorship. In a rare interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this year, Durov revealed that the U.S. “Deep State” pressured him to create backdoor access into Telegram. This would allow them to spy on users under the guise of “national security.” Durov didn’t flinch—he refused.

Instead of complying, he doubled down on his commitment to keeping Telegram free from the reach of government snoops.  In the same interview, Durov also attacked Apple and Google for their cozy relationships with government agencies and their willingness to censor content at the drop of a hat. Durov’s defiance made him a target. The timing of his arrest is no coincidence.

This isn’t just about Telegram—this is a warning shot to anyone who champions free speech in the digital age. As X stands firm in its largely non-censorious stance on political, philosophical, and cultural discourse, the powers that be have grown increasingly uncomfortable. Elon Musk is undoubtedly on notice. Telegram has been the bane of not just Western governments but also Russia, given its amplified the voice of dissidents and opponents of the Kremlin….

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former U.S. Presidential candidate who has consistently fought against the erosion of free speech, also weighed in. He highlighted Durov’s arrest as a stark reminder of the growing threat to platforms that protect speech and privacy. As he aptly put it, “The need to protect free speech has never been more urgent.” The reality is clear: Durov’s arrest is about control, plain and simple…

Today it’s Telegram. Tomorrow it could be X, Rumble, Substack or any other platform that values your freedom and privacy over government demands.

Quite so. One meme making the rounds at the moment on social media says this about Zuckerberg vs Durov: “Mark Zuckerberg is free because he sells people’s personal information. Pavel Durov is not free because he does not sell people’s personal information.”

There just might be something to all that. The free speech wars continue.

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Republished with thanks to CultureWatch. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.