Censorship Via Corporate Action

Censorship is not permitted by government, under the Constitution.

However, Leftists have gotten around that little problem by targeting the Social Media Giants for cooperation with their aim of shutting up opposition. David Horowitz's Front Page has a post detailing the ways that Leftists are seeking that aim.

Facebook has been a particularly heavy-handed suppressor of Free Speech. The site has used both algorithms and people to weed out what it terms "hate speech". The result:

The company says it now ­deletes about 288,000 hate-speech posts a month.

But activists say that Facebook’s censorship standards are so unclear and biased that it is impossible to know what one can or cannot say.

One of the people that is concerned about FB censorship is Susan Benesch.

“Facebook is regulating more human speech than any government does now or ever has,” said Susan Benesch, director of the Dangerous Speech Project, a nonprofit group that researches the intersection of harmful online content and free speech. “They are like a de facto body of law, yet that law is a secret.”

So, is the answer to empower this project?

No. Their logo tells their viewpoint.

In their little world, speech is as potentially violent as a bomb. In their words:

Dangerous Speech is any form of expression (speech, text, or images) that can increase the risk that its audience will condone or participate in violence against members of another group

 Their Guidelines for determining whether speech is dangerous are available here. I strongly suggest that you read it. It is chilling, as it gently, kindly, oh-so-reasonably lays out a case for destroying the most important of the American Rights.

Here is the profile information for Susan Benesch, the director of that project.