Tag: Censorship

Restore Newsmax to DirecTV and Score a Win for Our Free Speech Rights

To truly amass power, a would-be autocrat or totalitarian regime will typically suppress any criticism or dissent that might emanate from those who may wish to challenge such authority.

How is the sinister goal of silencing vast numbers of individuals or organizations reached? By controlling and/or eliminating the free flow of news and information within a society.

Examining Newsmax’s removal from DirecTV’s platform is critical in understanding what has happened to the Fourth Estate, what stage in the totalitarian process we are presently in, and what are the means by which we can make our way back to freedom.

In a 2020 Atlantic article, which was written by Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods, and recently referenced by legal scholar and law professor Jonathan Turley, the article’s authors stated that “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.”

Characterizing “significant monitoring and speech control” as “inevitable,” the authors also determined that “governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with society norms and values.”

This translates into the First Amendment’s complete abolishment.

It is imperative therefore to focus on the recent action by DirecTV (AT&T’s satellite TV provider) in removing Newsmax (the fourth largest cable news channel) from its network, and doing so on the heels of the similar earlier removal of One America News from its lineup.

Twitter owner Elon Musk opened the eyes of so many with the release of the “Twitter Files.” These are internal messages that demonstrate the company, under previous ownership, interacted with government and law enforcement officials to block or restrict prominent right-of-center accounts.

To the rescue have come some heroic office holders that are currently working, via policy and law, to rescue free expression from the jaws of suppression.

The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana have filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Louisiana against the White House and dozens of government officials, alleging that they have been coercing media to censor political criticisms, which is in direct violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The outcome of the case is part of the valiant effort to restore the First Amendment to its proper place, and to also expose the “disinformation” ruse.

The attorneys general are responding to recent revelations that indicate news media companies, digital platforms and social media companies have worked in tandem with government officials to discriminate against the free expressions of their political opponents.

Andrew Bailey, Missouri’s new attorney general, was blunt in his language regarding administration officials.

“When, in the public forum, there is speech they disagree with and does not align with their political narratives they then collude with and coerce Big Tech’s social media to take that speech down.”

Via the discovery process attendant to the lawsuit, the depositions of administration officials and the production of documents have yielded evidence, which points to explicit and repeated censorship.

The legislatures of Florida and Texas have stepped into the free speech fray by passing new laws that help prevent digital platforms from removing content that is based on viewpoints involving politics, policies and the like.

The new Republican majority in the House has formed a select subcommittee to investigate what chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, described as routine government violations of the First Amendment’s protections.

Legislators have subpoenaed top tech executives of some of the tech industry’s biggest companies. They are conducting a probe into whether there was collusion between Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. to suppress free speech.

Letters demand documents and communications, including any White House communications related to the regulation of content between the companies and administration officials.

Said documents and communications are being sought from Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Perhaps legislators will consider adding the names of the executives who run DirecTV and AT&T to the list.

“Congress has an important role in protecting and advancing fundamental free speech principles, including by examining how private actors coordinate with the government to suppress First Amendment-protected speech,” Rep. Jordan’s office indicated in a statement.

So the free speech battle lines have been drawn. The fight to restore free speech in the digital media realm brings up a simple question.

How much ideological discrimination of speech should a free people tolerate?

Here’s the simple answer.

None.

AT&T All In on the Woke Agenda

AT&T and its subsidiary DirecTV recently dropped Newsmax from its lineup, while leaving in place 22 liberal news channels.

The subsidiary canceled the fourth highest-rated news channel, which left 25 million cable viewers scrambling to get their preferred channel from a different source.

DirecTV’s parent company doesn’t appear to be operating under any kind of conventional business model. The blatant ideological discrimination begs the question: Just how woke is the telecommunications giant?

It turns out that AT&T is so woke its executives are asleep at the wheel.

Congressional investigations are surely coming, as are a growing number of boycotts, etc., that could really have an impact.

In a nutshell, the world’s largest telecommunications company (and third largest provider of cell phones) has insidiously morphed into a far-left organization that poses as a service company.

According to OpenSecrets, during the time period between 1989 and 2019, AT&T was the fourteenth-largest donor to United States federal political campaigns and committees, contributing tens of millions of dollars, a majority of which went straight into Democrat hands.

As Newsmax contributor Jeffrey Lord reported in the American Spectator, the company’s leaders have backgrounds that link them with politicians of the liberal Democrat kind.

AT&T’s board of directors includes a chairman of the board that previously served as FCC chair, and was appointed by former President Bill Clinton. This same chairman of the board was an ambassador that was appointed to the position by former President Barack Obama.

Two board members are reliable contributors to prominent Democratic candidates, including one individual who was an advisor and supporter of former President Bill Clinton, as well as being the co-chair of the left-leaning Brookings Institution.

One board member was an appointee to President Obama’s “President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.”

Another board member was a former President of the Ford Foundation, an outfit that donated millions of dollars to an anti-Trump organization.

AT&T’s board is extremely suspect when it comes to decisions concerning conservative political expression, as Lord wrote in his conclusion:

“Board of Directors of AT&T that is stacked with like-minded far Left extremists who cannot abide conservatives or political dissent.”

And what about AT&T’s top management position?

According to City Journal’s Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, AT&T’s CEO John Stankey launched a radical re-education program in 2020 for his employees, which promoted the following racially tinged idea: “American racism is a uniquely white trait.”

The CEO’s program also pushed left-wing concepts such as “reparations,” “defunding of police” and “trans activism.”

The training essentially massages the minds of white employees into believing that they “are the problem.”

The line of reasoning is based on core principles of critical race theory that include “systemic racism,” “white privilege” and “white fragility.”

So the person at the helm of the telecommunications company is pushing an agenda that could have been crafted by Saul Alinsky?

As Lord observed, “AT&T has been changed from a politically neutral communications company to a woke, far left censor which has charged itself with an obsessive mission of silencing conservatives — Newsmax in this case, and One America News before that.”

AT&T doesn’t exactly have a track record that inspires trust.

–In January of 2006 The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class action lawsuit, alleging that the company had allowed a government intelligence agency to monitor, without warrants, phone and Internet communications of its customers.

–In May of 2006, USA Today reported that all of AT&T’s international and domestic calling records had been handed over to a government intelligence agency for the purpose of creating a massive calling database.

–In June of 2006, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that AT&T had rewritten rules on its privacy policy so that “AT&T – not customers – owns customers’ confidential info and can use it ‘to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process.’”

–In July of 2006, a federal district court rejected a federal government motion to dismiss EFF’s case. After the case had been appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court dismissed it in June of 2009.

–In August of 2007, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell confirmed that AT&T was one of the telecommunications companies that assisted with the government’s warrantless wire-tapping program on calls between foreign and domestic sources.

AT&T’s DirecTV pays cable license fees to all 22 left-leaning news channels that it carries, despite the fact that most of the channels have far lower ratings than Newsmax.

Additionally, leftist organizations have exerted pressure on the already woke company to actually get rid of conservative programming.

New York Magazine in January 2022 reported the following: “In recent months, several organizations, including the NAACP and Media Matters for America, had been pressuring AT&T and DirecTV to dump OAN for promoting false information…”

Added to those lobbying the telecommunication company to deplatform Newsmax and other conservative media outlets are Democrats in Congress, who sit on a committee that is charged with regulating AT&T.

Did corporate heads at AT&T via its DirecTV subsidiary set out to suppress the speech of Newsmax? And was the company following the dictates of its fellow left-leaning politicians, media apparatchiks and radical activist groups?

The pieces of the puzzle seem to be falling into place.

Meaningful steps can be taken to let AT&T know that it doesn’t get to rewrite the Constitution.

–Cancel DirecTV by calling 877-763-9762.

–Cancel AT&T by calling 888-855-2338.

–Call congressional representatives and senators at 202-224-3121.

–Sign the online petition at IwantNewsmax.com

–Spread the word.

Freedom of speech hangs in the balance.

What’s Behind DirecTV’s Censorship of Newsmax?

DirecTV just recently removed Newsmax from its channel lineup.

It was less than a year ago that the AT&T-owned media outlet deplatformed One America News (OAN), another digital news source that offers folks a more balanced option to the far-left fare that overwhelmingly dominates the current media ethersphere.

The selective decision by corporate heads appears to have been highly politically motivated, since a host of channels that are filled with radical-left programming are still readily available to DirecTV users, even though viewing audiences remain in short supply.

Newsmax, on the other hand, ranks as the fourth highest-rated cable news channel in the nation. But now the more than 15 million customers of DirecTV, DirecTV Stream, and U-Verse are no longer able to access Newsmax’s alternative to the knee-jerk liberal content that appears on almost all of the other news and information channels.

One of the outlets with an extreme left-wing agenda that is allowed to freely prattle on is Vice Media. The channel is a virtual promoter of the trademark liberal political violence that has been witnessed over the past several years. Not only does Vice Media get to remain on the platform, it turns out that it is being subsidized financially by a managing owner of DirecTV.

Newsmax has experienced tremendous growth precisely because it continues to deliver to audiences the content that they seek; content largely denied to them elsewhere. Comprehensive coverage of national and international news, governmental operations, legal procedures and rulings, federal, state and local politics, etc., are on the daily docket.

With this latest move, DirecTV is essentially stifling speech that counters the Democratic Party’s carefully crafted and disseminated narrative.

Could it have anything to do with the looming 2024 presidential election? You be the judge.

Republican congressional members are rightly indignant about DirecTV’s decision. Many are publicly condemning the unprecedented move.

In light of the recent Twitter file revelations that point to probable collusion between government and technology platforms, it seems as though the perfect opportunity has presented itself for the new GOP-controlled House to investigate the origins of DirecTV’s decision to engage in what appears to be blatant ideological discrimination.

House committees may be taking a closer look at an entity called TPG Capital. This is a private equity fund that reportedly owns a 30% stake in DirecTV and also appears to oversee the cable company’s operations.

A few more details. TPG Capital is the private equity arm of the global asset firm TPG, which has fully adopted a woke-oriented agenda referred to in the business world as Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG).

ESG is a sort of measuring tool to gauge whether or not business organizations are sufficiently onboard with the woke agenda in order to qualify for financing and other advantages that equity firms provide.

On its website, TPG boasts about its ESG bona fides:

“TPG first adopted a Global ESG Performance Policy in 2012 and became a signatory to the UN Principles of Responsible Investment in 2013. Each year, we continue to strengthen and deepen the integration of ESG performance throughout the firm.”

While AT&T owns 70% of DirecTV, the telecommunications company had earlier sold a 30% stake to TPG.

AT&T named TPG as DirecTV’s operational manager. Under the terms of the transaction, the current DirecTV is governed by a board with two representatives from AT&T, two from TPG, and an additional fifth seat designated for the CEO.

The politics of those at the top rung of TPG are of the ultra-liberal kind. TPG’s executives have given Democratic candidates 90% of their political donations. The private equity firm has also subsidized the aforementioned far-left news network Vice Media to the tune of hundreds of millions.

The TPG partners that have been appointed to the DirecTV board are David Trujillo and John Flynn. Trujillo is a source of funds for Democrat politicians that include former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra.

Interestingly, prior to the time OAN was jettisoned from DirecTV, Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee had admonished the cable carrier for the “spread of dangerous misinformation.”

Representatives Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., had written letters to a dozen cable, satellite and streaming video companies, including DirecTV, demanding without evidence that the content providers give an explanation as to why they were allowing Newsmax, OAN and Fox to remain on their platforms, accusing the media companies of “disseminating misinformation to millions” of users.

“Misinformation on TV has led to our current polluted information environment that radicalizes individuals to commit seditious acts and rejects public health best practices…,” the representatives wrote, singling out Newsmax, OAN and Fox.

With two out of three outlets on the list going down, Congress needs to act fast to rescue free speech from the clutches of the stealth partners in the censorship battle.

Red is the New Blacklist

“Corporate communism” is a phrase, which according to the Urban Dictionary, was first used by former MSNBC host Dylan Ratiger.

The two words essentially refer to a combined government and corporate system that generally moves wealth and power from middle class working folks to an elite group of individuals in order to exercise control over institutions and populations and to also eliminate competition and options in the process.

Economic policies that confiscate people’s earned income, coupled with lockdown impositions, false media narratives, and severe suppression of free expression, are just some of the indicators that warn of our nation’s rapid shift in the corporate communism direction of which Ratiger made reference.

In 2010 the former cable television host penned a piece in the Huffington Post. He offered an explanation as to why Americans of the last decade were inclined to reject communism.

“…it [communism] historically has allowed a tiny group of people to consolidate complete control over national resources (including people), in the process stifling competition, freedom and choice.”

Communist systems inevitably lead to a loss of freedom, a culture of exploitation, and a compromised group of leaders who obtain their positions courtesy of cronyism, nepotism, and treachery.

Elites who rule communist regimes are notorious for stealing wealth from their citizens in order to enrich themselves.

Hugo Chavez, the communist dictator of Venezuela, railed against the wealthy, while he himself lived an opulent lifestyle.

Chavez was not wealthy at the time when, as president in 1998, he took over the then-wealthiest nation in South America. However, before he died he managed to end up with a net worth of over $1 billion.

Communist Fidel Castro told the people of Cuba that he resided in a fisherman’s hut. But according to a book written by his former bodyguard, the despot owned a 90-foot yacht and over 20 luxurious properties, which were located throughout the country. Castro’s assets were reportedly worth about $900 million; this according to Forbes.

Perhaps it is the lure of monopolistic wealth that explains why multinational corporations nowadays seem to have forgotten the reasons for the decades-long cold war with the Soviet Union that our nation had to endure.

Billionaire co-founder of PayPal and member of Facebook’s board of directors Peter Thiel recently stated that multinational corporations in Silicon Valley do not consider themselves to be “American companies.”

Thiel’s viewpoint is that this lack of corporate loyalty is partially due to the embrace of “woke politics.” But there is also the factor that many of the companies’ employees are sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party, particularly those who happen to be Chinese nationals.

In December of 2020, New York Post columnist Miranda Devine wrote a piece titled “US companies riddled with members of Chinese Communist Party” (https://nypost.com/2020/12/13/us-companies-riddled-with-members-of-chinese-communist-party/).

In the article, Devine discussed a database that had been leaked, which revealed that American companies had been infiltrated by registered members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

China severely restricts its citizens’ rights of free speech and expression. In fact, the CCP exerts tight control over its media by mandating that all published information be vetted by the regime.

The communist nation filters and censors the internet while being given an assist by multinational corporations that include Google and Yahoo. This requirement is enforced via a strict criminal prosecution system.

China’s attitudes are consistent with those of the international left who have no interest in the free flow of ideas or debate. Founding communists Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky viewed free speech as a bourgeois value and had no problem shutting down presses that were not controlled by the Party.

In reality, communist ideology of any kind is wholly incompatible with the concept of individual freedom. An individual’s best interests are always subordinate to the collective’s best interests.

In corporate communism, multinational conglomerates work in concert with the government to alter, affect, and/or abolish competition, free expression, and choice of employment.

Regimes of this type today also practice blacklisting.

Blacklisting is action on the part of an authority in which a roster is compiled of those who hold ideas, beliefs, or attitudes or who engage in practices or activities that are deemed unacceptable by the powers that be.

For years it has been commonly associated with investigations, which were instituted by the House Un-American Activities Committee back in 1947, in order to block screenwriters and other Hollywood professionals, purported to be supporters of communism, from obtaining employment.

Today’s blacklists contain the names of those who have fallen victim to what is now being referred to as “cancel culture.”

Those who are unfortunate enough to become blacklisted are exiled from digital and broadcast platforms because of past expression of ideas, which run counter to the contemporary narrative of the government-corporate regime holding the strings.

Communism by any other name is just as insidious. And just as deadly to freedom.

Ted Cruz’s Legislation Could Halt China’s Censoring of Hollywood

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Texas Senator Ted Cruz may really be on to something big.

Sen. Cruz plans to introduce legislation soon, which will address a critically important issue involving the rights of Americans, as well as folks in other nations, to enjoy entertainment product that is free from Chinese communist censorship.

The former 2016 GOP presidential candidate has, in accordance with modern congressional practice, affixed a clever acronym to his new bill, SCRIPT, which stands for the “Stopping Censorship, Restoring Integrity, Protecting Talkies” Act.

The legislation seeks to deter a current practice of Hollywood studios in which, prior to release, they submit movies to Chinese censors. The proposed law would cut off any assistance given by the Department of Defense to those film studios that allow the communist regime to alter cinematic content.

With regard to many a film and television production project, Hollywood has often requested help from the Pentagon. It has been this way for years. In each branch of the military, there is actually a liaison office that aids filmmakers with consultation, personnel, equipment, and access to military installations.

“For too long, Hollywood has been complicit in China’s censorship. The SCRIPT Act will serve as a wake-up call by forcing Hollywood studios to choose between the assistance they need from the American government and the dollars they want from China,” Sen. Cruz recently said in a statement.

The truth is Hollywood is in need of a wake-up call. China was set to surpass the U.S. box office of 2020 just before the coronavirus shutdown occurred.

Hollywood executives are well aware of the fact that the Chinese regime limits the number of foreign films that can be released annually in its country. Additionally, many Chinese companies provide considerable amounts of capital for Hollywood productions.

The Chinese regime is preoccupied with projecting a false image in order for it to continue to maintain its power. As a result it has frequently injected itself into creative aspects of American entertainment production and oftentimes altered content to fit its own agenda.

Back in 1997, Martin Scorsese’s film “Kundun” was banned, because it appeared to be sympathetic to the Dalai Lama. Scorsese and other members of the production team were literally banned by the Chinese regime from ever entering the country again.

China also took the dramatic step of banning Disney films and television shows. Disney actually apologized in 1998 for releasing “Kundun.” Eventually, though, the company was able to make a deal in 2016 to open Shanghai Disneyland.

In 2006, creators of “Mission Impossible III” were required to remove part of the film’s opening sequence in which underwear hanging on a clothesline made its “undesirable” appearance in a Tom Cruise chase scene in Shanghai.

The following year, creators of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” were evidently persuaded to edit out footage of the character Chow Yun-fat, because it offended the Chinese powers that be.

In a 2012 reboot of “Red Dawn,” the original plot featured an invasion of the United States by China. The storyline was dutifully altered to depict the invading enemy as being from North Korea. Since the initial filming had already been completed, this feat was accomplished via re-shoots and digital alteration. It would be to no avail though, because the movie still ended up in the position of being unable to obtain a China release.

The James Bond 2013 installment, “Skyfall,” was released only after scenes that included Chinese police using torture tactics and prostitution occurring in Macau were edited out.

That same year the Brad Pitt film “World War Z” was banned by the regime in Beijing, because the plot of the film had the origin of the zombie outbreak kick off in China. Interestingly, Chinese officials also had a grudge against Pitt for his audaciousness in having starred in the movie “Seven Years in Tibet.”

As a condition of the China release of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” creators of the 2018 Queen biopic had to redact any references to lead singer Freddie Mercury’s sexual identity and the cause of his passing. The Chinese censors even removed part of star Rami Malek’s Oscar acceptance speech from the streaming Academy Award ceremony.

During the same year, Disney’s “Christopher Robin” was banned by Chinese censors, because activists had noted on the internet President Xi Jinping’s resemblance to Winnie the Pooh.

In the movie trailer of the yet to be released “Top Gun: Maverick,” missing from Tom Cruise’s iconic leather jacket are the Japanese and Taiwanese flag patches, which appeared on Maverick’s original coat. The patches have been replaced by two non-descript, similarly colored symbols.

Sen. Cruz’s SCRIPT Act would be a great first step in trying to address China’s egregious pattern of modifying U.S. entertainment product.

Now if only Hollywood could lend its support to the cause embodied in the legislation — that even in the entertainment industry, artistry and its dual pursuits of truth and self-determination, still reign supreme over profit.

Tech Oligarchs Censor the Right

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The technology companies that provide social media platforms have grown to gargantuan size and now possess an ominous power over the ability of citizens to express and communicate ideas.

This control over free expression, which is held by a few tech oligarchs, is unprecedented at any time in human history.

The most widely used social media platform, Facebook, claims 2 billion users globally and is the preferred source for news for 45 percent of American adults. Three hundred hours of video are uploaded to Google-owned YouTube every minute of the day. And Twitter indicates that it has 330 million monthly active users. It was inevitable that these three monolithic social media platforms would be replete with users who seek to influence public opinion.

At one time all three seemed to reflect the notion that the general Internet should be treated as a free and open forum for any and all points of view.

The three have now shown themselves to be untrustworthy with data. They have proven to be biased, and of late have made it clear that they are willing to utilize the same kind of censorship that authoritarian regimes impose.

The ability of conservatives to reach people through the use of social media is being slowly and steadily diminished by the implemented policies of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This is occurring under the guise of eliminating false information.

Videos, posts, and other expressions are routinely being taken down, accounts are surreptitiously being limited in scope, and in some cases users are even being exiled from the Internet.

Tech giants have consistently demonstrated hostility toward the convictions of Americans who dare to hold contrary views to the pre-ordained liberal script. This all seemed to have begun with the revelation in the spring of 2016 that news curators at Facebook were suppressing news stories from right-of-center outlets. The resultant negative publicity caused Facebook to actually remove its human editors.

Last summer Twitter blocked pro-life advertisements, labeling them “sensitive content.” Early this year Twitter claimed that it was purging the platform of suspected Russian bot accounts, but it ended up causing conservative Twitter users, including podcaster Dan Bongino, to suffer a loss of followers.

In what it claimed to be a hunt for “fake news,” YouTube shut down highly viewed non-liberal channels on its platform. It ultimately had to apologize for what it called “mistaken removals,” just one more admission that a video platform had engaged in ideological censorship. The organization’s use of an extreme left-wing group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, to determine what is “offensive” speech is a major tell of YouTube’s true intentions.

Oddly, the highly entrepreneurial Silicon Valley community has allowed itself to become a slavish patron of anti-business liberalism. As is typical of much of Wall Street and many major corporations, the tech world is devoted to leftist immigration policies that allow tech companies to access inexpensive labor.

Perhaps because the technology world considers itself to be scientifically minded, a huge portion of the tech community has become enamored with faux scientists such as Al Gore and have simply bought the notions of radical environmentalists hook, line, and sinker.

Those outside of the liberal circle, who happen to constitute a sizable segment of society, have made great strides in the past using digital technology to persuade the public. Presently, though, they are justifiably concerned about losing access to social media platforms at such a critical juncture in U.S. politics.

Where do divergent thinkers go to find a way to fight back against the free expression redactors? Here are some options for consideration:

–Litigation.

Lawsuits launched by those who feel as if they have experienced interference with their free expression on social media may find themselves in an uphill battle. However, it may be worth the struggle.

At the trial level, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh recently indicated that Prager University, a non-profit project by author, educator, and national radio talk show host Dennis Prager, failed to show in a lawsuit that YouTube infringed upon its free speech rights by placing age restrictions on its content.

The suit was filed over YouTube’s “Restricted Mode” setting on such topics it deemed offensive. The judge held that YouTube was not a “state actor,” but rather a “private entity” and as such was not subject to First Amendment protections.

The judge also dismissed a claim on another legal theory that YouTube engaged in false advertising by implying that Prager University’s videos were “inappropriate.”

The judge did encourage Prager University to amend its lawsuit to explore whether California’s state constitution would provide protection “in the age of social media and the Internet.” The decision can, of course, be appealed.

–Regulation.

The cumulative actions of social media giants have resulted in otherwise free market thinking individuals to begin eyeing the prospects of some kind of limited government regulation of the social media space.

One approach would be to classify social media platforms as “common carriers” and require that all users be treated equally. This is a variant of the much touted “net neutrality” about which tech blogs often rant.

A specific proposal that seems to have some merit involves mandating that users who are dissatisfied with either Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter be allowed to freely transfer their data to another platform, much in the same way consumers transfer their cell phone numbers from one carrier to another.

–Competition.

It is long overdue that a freedom loving social media provider appear on the scene.

Similar to the way in which the bias of the mainstream media gave birth to the alternative media, i.e., Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the like, those who hold non-liberal beliefs must create an alternative social media and do so before its too late.