Only a year ago, the idea of suspending Donald Trump from Twitter was a Democratic Party fantasy, with putative new Vice President Kamala Harris leading the charge.
During election week it became the norm, amid a sharp escalation of politicized deletions, suspensions, and lockouts by the tech platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Twitter essentially stuffed a pair of work gloves in Trump’s mouth in the days after Election Day, deleting over half of his tweets. Non-Trump social media mostly exulted:
Trump wasn’t the only one hit, nor was the phenomenon limited to conservatives like Dan Bongino, Maria Bartiromo, or Steve Bannon, who was banned for life after suggesting that Anthony Fauci and Christopher Wray’s heads be put “on pikes” at the “two corners of the White House” as a warning to federal bureaucrats. Even blue-party mouthpiece Neera Tanden, as perfect a representation of the political mainstream as draws breath, got slapped with a warning label.
While new platform-censorship controversies involving opposition movements in Nigeria, Vietnam, India, and other places made headlines abroad, Silicon Valley began using its content veto in the U.S. in new ways during election season. Moreover, in a recent Senate Commerce Committee hearing, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, seemed to admit what’s been apparent for some time, that the World Socialist Web Site has taken an unnatural hit to its traffic. Here’s the key exchange with Utah Senator Mike Lee:
Continue ReadingLEE: I’m just asking if you can name one high profile liberal person or company who you have censored…
PICHAI: We have had compliance issues with the World Socialist Review [sic], which is a left-leaning publication…