The New York Post Gets the AmRen Treatment
Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, October 15, 2020
Yesterday, Twitter gave the New York Post the AmRen treatment. The right-leaning tabloid published a damning report about how Hunter Biden profited from his father’s influence, but Twitter users got this message if they clicked on the link.
Potentially spammy or unsafe. Sure. This is the same message you get if you click on an American Renaissance link. It says our site might give your computer a virus. Of course, to Twitter, our ideas are dangerous and potentially viral. That’s why the onetime “free speech wing of the free speech party” banned us.
A Facebook representative also said the company was checking the Biden story and “reducing its distribution.”
Yesterday, the “Woke Left” made a mistake. If censorship stopped with the Dissident Right, many conservatives would be happy. They do their own purges in the hope of staying respectable. They benefit from censorship of people with competing ideas, but they’re not in charge. Lefties are.
The “woke” Left always needs new racists or fascists to attack. It doesn’t seem to be able to control its libido for censorship. By trying to spike a story that could badly embarrass the Democrat candidate, it has directly inserted itself into the presidential election, confirming conservatives’ worst fears.
Sohrab Ahmari is op-ed editor for the New York Post.
Twitter is censoring us — again.
This is what I — an editor at America’s oldest continuously published newspaper, founded by Alexander Hamilton — get when I try to post our follow-up story on Hunter’s financial shenanigans with the Chinese regime. pic.twitter.com/6BUGtqYXhA
— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) October 15, 2020
Twitter made things worse when it tried to explain its decision.
The policy, established in 2018, prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization. We don’t want to incentivize hacking by allowing Twitter to be used as distribution for possibly illegally obtained materials.https://t.co/qx9rlzWH4O
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 14, 2020
Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable. https://t.co/v55vDVVlgt
— jack (@jack) October 14, 2020
This is hypocritical. Someone illegally leaked President Trump’s tax returns, but Twitter let the story trend for days. Melania Trump’s “friend” secretly recorded their conversations and leaked them to the media. Antifa accounts on Twitter have distributed private material intending to get people fired. Twitter didn’t care.
Social network companies are not backing down. Google/YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are all suppressing “QAnon” pages. This morning, Twitter even locked President Trump’s campaign account. Fox News’s Tom Starnes says that Facebook is “actively shutting down traffic to conservative pages.”
Big Tech cracked down on American Renaissance long ago. The conservative movement said nothing. Ted Cruz now says Big Tech just “crossed a line,” but it has been censoring conservatives and nationalists for years. What’s the line? Anything that crosses Ted Cruz’s toes? National Review protested on behalf of the New York Post, but didn’t stand up for us. Just a few weeks ago, National Review was piling on to “conspiracy theorists” Laura Loomer, Major Taylor Greene, and the QAnon movement, without a word about censorship.
Today, egalitarians claim everything is racist, including the national anthem, the national parks, the Declaration of Independence, and math. Why would they stop muzzling people just because conservatives want them to?
Senator Josh Hawley asked Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
NEW — U.S. Senator Josh Hawley has formally requested @Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and @Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism in a coming hearing titled “Digital Platforms and Election Interference.” pic.twitter.com/VlXBo17bX0
— Senator Hawley Press Office (@SenHawleyPress) October 15, 2020
Why should they show up? When Republicans had power in 2017–2018, they did nothing to control Big Tech. Instead, they passed a tax cut that meant millions for Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Dorsey. Barring an unprecedented polling error, in less than a month, Republicans will lose the White House and possibly the Senate. The President and Republicans have complained about censorship, and let it continue. It’s probably too late now.
Social media companies are no longer “private companies.” By controlling information, they control elections. Before America goes on another crusade to spread democracy in Belarus or Hong Kong, let’s liberate ourselves first. We don’t need to topple “authoritarians” overseas. We need to bring down the semi-monopolies that rule what used to be our country.