Freedom of Speech Coming to an End in your Once Free Country
Freedom of speech is dying in the USA and other once free countries around the world and few are noticing. As populations have moved from TV, phone calls and letters to texting and social media for virtually all their information and communication, the most popular two, Twitter and Facebook, have taken it upon themselves to become the “thought police.”
On August 10, 2020, NBC News reported that Facebook has found more than 3 million members of the QAnon community on its platform. The report went on to say that Facebook has accepted more than 185 ads in the last 30 days that support QAnon, earning them $12,000.
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On August 19, 2020, Facebook announced that they have removed more than 790 groups, 100 pages and 1500 accounts that are connected to QAnon. They have also restricted more than 10,000 Instagram accounts.
Never mind whether or not anything put out by QAnon is factual. The last time I checked the US constitution (and most other free, democratically operated countries are very similar in their laws), lying, while distasteful, is still free speech.
But the big social media seem to have decided that anything that they disagree with or that their big corporate advertisers disagree with cannot be allowed. All that has to happen, as happened just a couple weeks ago, is for these big advertisers to boycott Twitter or Facebook and BOOM! The hammer of censorship is dropped on free speech.
Facebook, you’re NOT my mom!
Do I agree with everything on Facebook or Twitter? Of course not! Do I follow QAnon or any other of these reported conspiracy theories? Yes, if I can. Do I join in with them or believe them? Probably not, but that doesn’t matter if I can’t even follow them to see what they’re doing!
I don’t need or want Twitter or Facebook to “parent” me. I am not a child who needs to be protected by billionaires whose morality is governed only by their bottom line.
The End of Free Speech
Free speech is dying, unless those who want to keep their freedom exercise it by moving to other social media platforms who still value free speech. Freedom is not free and if you don’t take even the slightest action by moving on to other platforms, you might just find yourself in the “United Soviet States of America.”
If you want that, fine. But not me. I have heard and read much in my lifetime that I’ve found distasteful. Many people lie. Many have ideas that I don’t agree with or even that are extreme and even inflammatory. But if we start censoring them all, where do we stop? Who do we trust to do it?
Twitter and Facebook are already giving us a taste of what it’s like to live in a once free world where you no longer get to know the views of everyone around you. What is the whole story? How can you know if it’s no longer available?
Warts and all, I Love the USA
I don’t personally live in the United States, but I still love the United States. The US has long stood in the name of freedom, a wall against those tyrannical and expansionist regimes who would take our freedoms away in many other countries, like Canada, for example.
That’s why the US is in such turmoil in some of its biggest cities, today. The US has long stood in the way of such aggression.
But today, people are listening to those who do not believe in freedom telling them they will live in a better, safer world if they just restrict the freedom of those who don’t think the same way as they do.
History is Repeating Itself
That has happened before. I well remember the university riots in Cambodia, the graphic images in Paris Match of students hanging one of their own from a tree with telephone wire, and worse.
Then came the rule of Pol Pot, welcomed by so many in that country with open arms. Freedom of speech died completely. Anyone with any kind of advanced education were rounded up and exterminated. Many of the very people who so openly supported Pol Pot’s despotic Communist regime were victims.
The very same thing is now playing out in the United States. The mainstream media has become a vast propaganda machine for the far left, and social media is colluding by shutting off those to speak the truth.
Free speech is coming to an end. Twitter, Google, and Facebook have become so emboldened by their success in suppressing the thoughts and opinions of those they (or their corporate advertisers) do not like that they have even censored a sitting US President (and continue to do so even now that he’s out of office)!
Do YOU Value Freedom of Speech?
If you value free speech, if you value living in a free country, the time to act is now. There are other social media groups like Parler, MeWe, Gab, Frank Speech, and others, who strongly support free speech. Are there offensive posts on them? Of course! Is there misinformation on them? Of course!! That is the relatively small price we have to pay for freedom. And as I have said, many times, to those who have asked me not to post certain things, if you don’t like it, just click away!
Freedom of speech is coming to an end in your once free country, unless you speak up!