XPost: talk.politics.guns, alt.politics.elections, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
XPost: sac.politics

In article <thj2k1$2teh2$1@dont-email.me>
<governor.swill@gmail.com> wrote:

Kathy Hochul is too busy sucking black peeders.

A staggering 99% of Twitter employees who make political
contributions give to Democrats. It’s almost as lopsided at
Facebook and Alphabet (Google’s parent company), according to
Federal Election Commission records.

Relying on these left-leaning tech platforms to be evenhanded
was always naïve. But recent evidence — email correspondence
between Big Tech executives and some 45 Biden administration
officials — suggests a danger even bigger than Silicon Valley
bias. Government is actually calling the shots on what to
censor. The US Constitution bars government from censoring, so
Team Biden has deputized Silicon Valley to do its dirty work.

The complicity between the Biden administration and Big Tech
should frighten all Americans. It’s like a vise tightening its
grip, snuffing out freedom. That makes reining in Big Tech even
more urgent. On Friday, the opportunity arrived.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected “the idea that
corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor
what people say.” The federal court upheld a Texas law that bars
social-media companies from taking down postings based on
political view.

For two decades, tech giants have claimed a constitutional right
to remove anything and anyone from their platforms. The appeals
court said no.

The social-media giants are appealing their loss to the US
Supreme Court. Justice Samuel Alito has indicated the case “will
plainly merit this court’s review.”

Get ready for a Supreme Court showdown with Justice Clarence
Thomas leading the effort to check Silicon Valley’s power. In
April 2021, Thomas lamented “the concentrated control of so much
speech in the hands of a few private parties.” Rather than
waiting for Congress to fix it, Thomas said the court should
fashion a remedy as soon as a case comes before it. That time
has arrived.

Thomas has proposed that social-media platforms be regulated
like common carriers or public utilities. AT&T can’t refuse to
open a phone account because of your political views. Your local
electric company can’t pick and choose its customers, and
neither can Amtrak.

In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled in Pruneyard Shopping Center v.
Robins that California could compel a shopping-mall owner to
open the premises to political protesters distributing leaflets.
California required the mall to be open to all speakers.
Shopping malls were the public squares of the 1980s. Digital
platforms are the 21st-century public squares.

They must not become government’s handmaidens. We have evidence
that’s occurring, thanks to a lawsuit Missouri Attorney General
Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry brought
against top Biden officials. Citing frequent email exchanges
between these officials and Big Tech employees, Schmitt and
Landry warn of a “massive, sprawling federal ‘Censorship
Enterprise’” and say the Biden administration “has colluded with
social media companies to censor free speech.”

There are more revelations to come. On Sept. 6, a federal court
ordered Dr. Anthony Fauci and White House Press Secretary Karine
Jean-Pierre to turn over their email exchanges with Big Tech to
the Missouri AG.

The Biden administration claims to be fighting to protect
democracy. But its efforts to silence political rivals using Big
Tech censorship prove the hypocrisy of that claim. Keeping
social-media platforms open to all viewpoints is vital to
democracy.

It’s also vital to the free exchange of scientific ideas. Big
Tech willingly complied with the Biden team’s attempts to stamp
out scientific disagreement over how to handle COVID. Scientists
who dissented from the party line on lockdowns, masking, school
closures and even the virus’ origins were blocked. The result
was a phony scientific consensus and many costly mistakes.

In September 2021 when YouTube suspended Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul
(a physician) for posting a video reporting that cloth masks are
ineffective, Paul charged that social media were acting as an
arm of the federal government. ABC News bashed Paul’s accusation
as “without evidence.”

Now we have the evidence.

Fortunately, Friday’s appeals court ruling puts the Supreme
Court on course to check social media’s unfettered and
increasingly dangerous censorship power.

Just in time. Democracy and free scientific inquiry will be
safer for it.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.

Twitter: @Betsy_McCaughey

https://nypost.com/2022/09/27/a-federal-ruling-means-a-supreme- court-showdown-on-big-tech-censorship-is-ahead/

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