Big tech exposed by Musk offer

 Elle Reynolds:

The “private business” or “build your own internet” argument in defense of Big Tech censorship was always a garbage excuse to let Silicon Valley silence speech it disagrees with, and the meltdown about Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter (making the platform a truly private company) makes it more obvious than ever.
...

When Big Tech companies like Twitter have censored users or content that challenges their agendas in the past — see, the New York Post’s Hunter Biden’s laptop bombshell, the 45th president of the United States, reporting on the crisis at the U.S. southern border, an obituary of a mother who reportedly died from Covid shot complications, members of Congress, investigative reporting on abortion, summaries of court decisions about election law, a Federalist editor who said boys and girls are different, The Babylon Bee, and the “Libs of Tik Tok” account, which exposes educators talking about their radical sex ideology, to name a few — a gaggle of censorship aficionados inevitably insist that “because the First Amendment doesn’t regulate private companies they can silence whoever the heck they want.”

As he typically does in such matters, Washington Post columnist Max Boot provides a textbook example.

After the New York Post published bombshell reporting about a compromising laptop belonging to then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter — a laptop which, more than a year later, The New York Times and Boot’s own employer have admitted is legit — Boot loudly defended Twitter’s “private-sector” right to censor the story.

“Facebook and Twitter are private-sector companies, and they have no obligation to pass along possible Russian disinformation. That’s not ‘censorship.’ It’s editorial judgment, and it’s something we need more of online,” Boot insisted in October 2020. “I’m all for free speech, but the First Amendment does not impose on companies a mandate to spread Russian — or Republican — disinformation.”
...

Now that Musk has offered to buy Twitter and make it a really private company, Boot is singing a different tune. “I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter. He seems to believe that on social media anything goes,” Boot cried on Thursday morning. “For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.”
...

The argument that free speech will destroy democracy would have made King George blush it is so ridiculous. Only a totalitarian would make such a ridiculous statement.  Big Tech is censoring material that is critical of their agenda.  

Why else would they be censoring the Babylon Bee for making a joke about a guy who thinks he is a woman.  That has zero to do with democracy and is entirely about tech's support for those with gender dysphoria.  Whatever a person's gender or what they think their gender might be, no one is denying them the right to vote.