On January 20, 2021, Joe Biden was sworn in as the President of the United States and while there were split opinions across the nation, behind the closed doors of Twitter and Facebook, there was likely a celebration as months of working to censor conservative news stories had finally achieved its end goal. The months leading up to the 2020 election were some of the most tumultuous in national history with political violence at an all-time high and respect for political adversaries at an all-time low. Given this national division, one would think that the best way to solve this is to encourage discussion amongst those who disagree and to allow for all voices to be heard. Unfortunately, Big Tech companies like Twitter and Facebook were not concerned with the best interests of the people and were instead only concerned with pushing their political agenda.
The most prominent example of this overt political agenda is the systematic suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story. In October 2020, a story emerged regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop containing abhorrent pictures and criminal conduct of the Biden family, potentially leading back to Joe Biden. This laptop was given to the FBI in 2019 after it was left at an Apple repair shop by Hunter Biden. The most damning allegations on the laptop were that Hunter Biden collected payments from Ukraine for work that was facilitated by Joe Biden. These same payments allegedly were then paid back to the “big guy,” Joe Biden. Joe Biden even bragged in an interview that he also used his influence as Vice President to remove a prosecutor who was investigating Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. So, in other words, corruption.
If the contents of the laptop were true, then Joe Biden was a corrupt politician who had been paid by a foreign nation that he was directly involved with as Vice President. Now of course, Facebook and Twitter couldn’t possibly let this news story circulate as it would ruin their chances to get the “racist” and “sexist” Donald Trump out of office. These companies as a result, decided to suppress and remove any post that discussed this scandal as being “Russian Disinformation.” This was even admitted by former Big Tech executives during a House Committee meeting where they acknowledged that it was a “mistake.” Suppressing this information came as a direct result of a letter from 51 former Intelligence Officials who speculated that the story seemed like Russian Disinformation. While this could at face value be considered a valid reason for the censorship, this entire reasoning immediately fell apart when it was revealed that the FBI confirmed the authenticity of this story directly to these companies.
Even if one were to assume that the Russian Disinformation letter had merit (which it didn’t, as the Biden Campaign was directly responsible for the letter), it is still wildly inappropriate for Twitter and Facebook to have censored this story, as it was confirmed to them from the body investigating the story that it was true, showcasing the motivations and political biases of these companies. The ramifications of this “mistake” could not be overstated, as if they had not suppressed this story, it is incredibly likely that Donald Trump would have won the 2020 election. Therefore, Big Tech companies essentially gaslit the entire country into not believing a true story and in doing so, rigged a presidential election.
The coronavirus outbreak brought mass amounts of hysteria and speculation as to the disease that was fundamentally changing our world. One would think that it would be reasonable to share information to gain a better sense of what was actually going on in the pandemic. However, Big Tech unfortunately didn’t share this same common sense sentiment. At the beginning of the outbreak, it was widely speculated that the virus came from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, where the virus was confirmed to have made its first human contact. Big Tech, however, took a hardline stance against this belief by taking down any posts suggesting that the virus originated in Wuhan. While to many, claiming that the COVID-19 virus from Wuhan may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology which was conducting testing on coronavirus strains in animals seemed reasonable, to Big Tech this was dangerous misinformation and a threat to our democracy. While this story was originally censored and suppressed, it is now reported that the strain causing the COVID-19 pandemic likely did leak from that same lab in Wuhan. Therefore, the original censorship of the lab leak theory once again showcases an example of Big Tech jumping the gun in deeming something as “misinformation”. The motivations in doing so once again become clear when examining that the person pushing this theory at the top of our government was then President Donald Trump. In labeling this theory as dangerous misinformation and ending any public discourse, Big Tech enabled the media to label the President as spreading “dangerous conspiracy theories” on their crusade to get their favorite boogeyman out of office in 2020. The political motivations of this censorship become clear when examining the coordination between Big Tech and the subsequent President Joe Biden. This motivation becomes especially clear when given the fact that the Biden administration sought to suppress information related to the failed Afghanistan withdrawal and the Russia-Ukraine war. Under Joe Biden and his Ministry of Truth, the Biden Administration worked with Social Media companies to suppress essentially any information that Joe Biden doesn’t like, including the lab-leak theory.
This was, of course, wildly inappropriate, as later decided by a judge in Missouri v. Biden who stated in his opinion that “[d]uring the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’”. This utilization of Social Media companies by the government to censor speech is an overt violation of the First Amendment and casts doubt on any other instance of censorship by Big Tech. Currently, there is no accountability possible for these Social Media companieas. The reason is that they are considered to be immune from lawsuits for the content on their platform as they are considered platforms and not publishers.
When examining the overt censorship of speech and the obvious political agenda in doing so, it is clear that these Social Media companies are acting as publishers of information that they deem acceptable and not as a platform for the exchange of ideas. Therefore, it is logical that one of two changes must be made. Either social media companies continue to receive protections under Section 230 and stop the censorship of speech on their platform in adherence with the First Amendment, or these companies can continue to censor information on their sites, but lose Section 230 protections and open themselves up to liability. A decision must be made one way or the other, Big Tech for far too long has been able to have it both ways.
The United States is a nation that was founded upon the free exchange of ideas. In our inception, we recognized that nobody should be jailed or restricted by the government for speech that they freely engage in. However, in today’s America, Big Tech has essentially acted as a governmental body that suppresses information it deems to be inconvenient to their political agenda and does so without fear of ramifications. Given that Big Tech in their censorship has changed the course of a Presidential election, silenced the truth about the COVID-19 pandemic, and enabled the Biden Ministry of Truth in their crusade to control the public narrative, it is clear that to preserve freedom of speech in the United States, Big Tech must be defeated.
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