Joe Biden Announces Campaign To Censor Trump, Other Conservatives on Facebook
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden took to Twitter on Thursday to unveil a new campaign initiative titled, “Fix Facebook. Beat Trump.”
Biden began his Twitter thread by complaining that “Facebook has failed to enact any real reforms to stop the spread of disinformation on its platform.”
“With less than 150 days until Election Day, the stakes couldn’t be higher. We’ve got to fix Facebook to protect our democracy and ensure fair elections,” he added.
“If you agree, sign the open letter today to demand Facebook take action.”
With less than 150 days until Election Day, the stakes couldn’t be higher. We’ve got to fix Facebook to protect our democracy and ensure fair elections.
If you agree, sign the open letter today to demand Facebook take action. #MoveFastFixIt https://t.co/6Hmta4UxS9
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 11, 2020
One of the tweets included a link to a page on Biden’s campaign website that asked visitors to sign the letter “demanding that Facebook change its policies to crack down on misinformation in ads and ensure a fair election.”
As school safety advocate and Republican Connecticut State Senate candidate JT Lewis pointed out, Biden’s new slogan serves as the latest example that “the Left wants to censor Conservative voices and they’re not trying to hide it anymore.”
This is a REAL slogan that Joe Biden just put out:
“Fix Facebook. Beat Trump.”
The Left wants to censor Conservative voices and they’re not trying to hide it anymore. https://t.co/rvmhaPMjSr
— JT Lewis (@thejtlewis) June 11, 2020
While Biden said that all he wants is a “fair election,” he and many others on the left really want Facebook to tilt the playing field in their favor by censoring conservative voices.
Facebook “continues to allow Donald Trump to say anything — and to pay to ensure that his wild claims reach millions of voters,” the open letter reads.
Among other things, it calls “for clear rules — applied to everyone, including Donald Trump — that prohibit threatening behavior and lies about how to participate in the election.”
Some of Facebook’s employees seem all too happy to aid the effort to censor Trump. A group of Facebook employees, for instance, staged a “virtual walkout” last week after company CEO Mark Zuckerberg refused to take Twitter’s approach and add warning labels to some of Trump’s Facebook posts.
Twitter, for its part, has abandoned its role as a neutral public platform in an effort to appease the activist left. Late last month, the social media giant labeled two of the president’s tweets talking about potential for fraud associated with mail-in voting as “unsubstantiated.”
It’s not like Facebook hasn’t instituted similar censorship measures. After all, Zuckerberg condemned the organization of anti-lockdown protests on his platform as “harmful misinformation,” adding “we take that down.” (A Facebook spokesperson later said such events would be taken down when they violate state laws or “guidance.”)
But according to Biden and the left, Facebook has still not gone far enough in its efforts to censor conservatives.
Biden’s desperate move, which shows utter disregard for the First Amendment, calls into question his campaign’s supposed confidence about its prospects in the 2020 election. If Biden and the left are so convinced that their guy will win in an electoral landslide, why work so hard to suppress the other side?
Should Facebook cave to the Biden campaign’s demands, it will become clear beyond a reasonable doubt that Silicon Valley has become just another arm of the left and vindicate those who have urged conservatives to migrate to alternative social media platforms such as Parler.
If Facebook gave into the pressure from the far left, that would also strengthen the case for removing or amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
As Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has explained: “With Section 230, tech companies get a sweetheart deal that no other industry enjoys: complete exemption from traditional publisher liability in exchange for providing a forum free of political censorship.”
Facebook would essentially break that “sweetheart deal” by adopting the Biden campaign’s prescription for battling “misinformation,” which amounts to nothing more than “political censorship.”
If Biden really wants to “protect our democracy and ensure fair elections,” then he must support policies that enable all voices to be heard. His new master plan to promote social media censorship does not fall into that category.
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