Trusting social media companies to be honest with its users is equal to trusting the media with being honest to its viewers — it happens very rarely. You could do nothing wrong except for not being afraid to tell the truth, while giving your opinion that you’re entitled to, and they’ll still try and take you down because they live in their Silicon Valley bubble and rarely stray from their dogmatic progressivism. Much like politicians, the media and celebrities, social media platforms seem to not care about you or respect what you believe unless those beliefs line up with their typically far-left ideologies.
As someone who has been banned from a social media platform myself, I can commiserate with people like right-leaning, not “far-right,” YouTuber, Paul Joseph Watson.
“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
That was a quote by the first president of these United States, George Washington, that Watson used in order to sum up his feelings on the Thursday Facebook purge of people they deemed “dangerous.”
Watson was banned from Facebook and Instagram Thursday afternoon, along with InfoWars founder Alex Jones, political activist Laura Loomer, “pro-white” former Congressional candidate from Wisconsin Paul Nehlen, and right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.
Facebook also decided to ban the anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI) Louis Farrakhan seemingly as a way to shut down debate from the right who always brings up his name when a social media platform does one of their purges.
Watson first spoke of his banishment Thursday on Twitter:
Reports are true.
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) May 2, 2019
I have been banned by Facebook.
Was given no reason. I broke none of their rules.
In an authoritarian society controlled by a handful of Silicon Valley giants, all dissent must be purged.
Please visit https://t.co/4psjfSdF96 while it still exists.
So why did Facebook shun Watson from the avenues of public discourse?
“We've always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology," a Facebook spokesperson told CNN Business in a statement. "The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today.”
In response to his banishment from the land of Zuckerberg, Watson released a three-and-a-half minute video on YouTube Thursday evening with indignation towards Facebook, who portrays themselves as the determiners of what’s real or fake news instead of leaving that decision up to the people who they perceivably don’t think can think for themselves.
“I gave you a little bit too much truth, and now I must be silenced,” Watson claimed at the beginning of his video.
Watson also spoke about the “dangerous individuals and organizations” he was being grouped with as part of Facebook’s ban:
They put me on a list with terrorists, human traffickers and serial killers, because I criticize modern art and modern architecture. Because I dare criticize mass immigration. Because I dare criticize a belief system, yet you [social media companies] still host Antifa accounts which threaten to assassinate the president [Trump]. You still host accounts that belonging to the sicko who sent death threats to Ben Shapiro’s family. This is truly, truly clown world.
You can watch Watson’s video below:
Whatever the true reason might be for Watson's take down, whether it was warranted, we may never know - because the only people that don’t seem to have to answer to calls for transparency are platforms like Facebook.