U.S. Government Demands Social Media Censorship by Kurt Nimmo.
From the post:
Congress and the White House are leaning on Twitter to censor Islamic State posts on its network.
Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, the chair of a House foreign affairs subcommittee on terrorism, has singled out Twitter for allowing supposed IS operatives to recruit and propagandize on the social media platform.
“This is the way (the Islamic State) is recruiting — they are getting people to leave their homelands and become fighters,” Poe said.
He added “there is frustration with Twitter specifically” over its refusal to censor tweets the government claims promotes terrorism.
I was hoping to read that Twitter told Congress and the White House to read the Constitution of the United States, especially:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
What part of “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press….” seems unclear?
What was the response of Twitter?
Twitter has responded to the accusations by saying it provides user tracking information on alleged IS members to the FBI.
…
Over the last year, however, Twitter has suspended a large number of IS accounts. It has suspended nearly 800 suspected accounts since last autumn, but this “may be the tip of the iceberg,” as almost 18,000 accounts “related” to the Islamic State were suspended over the same time period, according to JM Berger, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who tracks Islamists on social media.
Assuming IS related accounts don’t violate Twitter’s terms of usage, why should they be suspended? An action for which there is no legal recourse?
Even worse, the censoring of IS on social media leaves the public with no alternative sources of information about IS, other than U.S. vetted propaganda.
An uniformed public cannot effective exercise its democratic franchise. Perhaps that is the goal of censoring IS content on social media. What are government leaders so afraid of the American public and other learning? That we have been lied to by our own government about IS?
Twitter should grow a spine and stop supplying tracking information on suspected IS members, stop suspending IS accounts and appeal to its user base to support those positions.
I fear ignorance and censorship far more than anyone identified as a terrorist by the U.S. government.
I first saw this in a tweet by the U.S. Department of Fear.