Big Tech has been censoring the truth

 Rachal Bovard:

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In the wake of the 2020 election, COVID-19 and every remotely controversial event that has followed, Twitter, Facebook and Google — America’s premier speech platforms, which house and shape our national discourse — have taken the decidedly opposite approach, limiting the free flow of information, dialogue and any opinion that runs counter to what the Silicon Valley speech gods and their army of partisan fact-checkers have singlehandedly determined as fact.

Speech, as such, is no longer allowed on the platforms. Just correct speech. And under the great dystopian valance that cloaks America’s major speech venues, the speech the platforms deem correct often turns out to be demonstrably wrong.

Consider how Facebook, in particular, treated the circumstances surrounding Kyle Rittenhouse, the teen acquitted last week of all charges in the self-defense killings of two men and the shooting of another during last summer’s riots in Kenosha, Wis. Immediately after the incident occurred, and despite video evidence which made a self-defense charge instantly plausible, Facebook declared it a “mass murder” and under that justification blocked searches for Rittenhouse’s name and any content in “praise or support” for him on the site — including links to contribute to his legal defense and videos purporting to show Rittenhouse providing aid to protesters.

In other words, Facebook determined that the only speech allowed on its platform was to declare Rittenhouse’s guilt, not his innocence. Perhaps prompted by Facebook’s actions or merely in spite of them, PayPal cut off affiliation with fundraising efforts for Rittenhouse, and so did GoFundMe.

PolitiFact, a Facebook-affiliated arbiter of facts, declared it was “false” that Rittenhouse was in legal possession of his firearm. The “fact-checker” did so by failing to account for exceptions in Wisconsin law which made his possession legal. (The gun charge was thrown out during the trial for the same reasons.)

A jury has acquitted Rittenhouse on all charges — those brought by the prosecutors and by Facebook — so now what? Will all the accounts which were banned or otherwise punished for speaking in his defense be reinstated? Will the self-righteous fact-checkers at PolitiFact be held accountable in any way? Will Facebook admit it was wildly wrong or simply pretend like it didn’t make a blundering, ham-fisted judgment about Rittenhouse absent any due process, one which contributed to shaping a false national narrative?

This isn’t the first time Facebook has been spectacularly wrong on an issue of national importance. Remember the COVID lab-leak theory? Throughout 2020, Facebook shut down and banned discussion that COVID-19 originated in a leak from a lab in Wuhan on the grounds that it was a dangerous conspiracy theory. In May, the company was forced to reverse itself after “experts” suddenly determined the theory to be credible.

“When does ‘misinformation’ stop being misinformation on social media?” asked The Wall Street Journal. The answer, said the editorial board, is “when Democratic government authorities give permission.”

And therein lies the rub for Facebook, which is decidedly no longer the bastion of free speech its founder once proclaimed. It is a central hub of America’s discourse, one which bears no accountability for being wrong about major cultural questions — despite the fact that in doing so, it becomes the purveyor of misinformation it deems only others to be.
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You would think that a responsible media outlet would at least offer a mea culpa.  But I suspect the libs who made this mistake are like the libs at CNN who think the jury made the mistake and they still ignore the facts and the law.   I also think Paypal and GoFundMe might also be sued in litigation Rittenhouse is bringing against those who defamed him as a  murder and white supremacist.