A Fox News column published on Monday questions whether or not social media companies like Facebook have too much power to regulate speech.
Ned Ryun, the CEO of American Majority, argued in a column on Monday that the recent bannings of conservative figures by Facebook should spark a debate about the level of power that social media companies have to regulate speech.
Ryun points out that these companies have grown to such a size that could be classed as a “publisher” or “telecommunications company.” If they were classed under either of these two categories, Facebook would likely only be permitted to ban users if they break the law.
Now as they’ve grown into the behemoths and monopolies they are today, they still insist they are anything but publishers and telecommunications companies as they create original content, curate and make editorial decisions and deploy broadband networks. We often get into trouble in life when we fail to define things properly, and you might say these companies look like a duck, quack like a duck, but self-identify as donkeys and the officials in Washington whose re-election efforts are funded by the tech companies nod and say, “Why, yes, you’re donkeys” when every objective person knows that’s patently false. As I always tell people, when nothing makes sense in Washington, when it’s obvious the sky is blue and Swamp Dwellers want to tell you it’s green, just follow the money and everything makes sense.
Ryun argues that the ability to speak on these platforms should be considered a civil right. Americans would not allow private businesses, Ryun argues, to discriminate against customers based on their race. Therefore, Americans should not allow social media companies to discriminate against users based on their political views.
There are absurd arguments being tossed about by some conservatives that “Private companies can do whatever they want” or “We don’t want more government regulation!” Pause for a moment and consider that argument for private restaurants denying people of color service because they were the wrong skin color. We, of course, know that behavior was a gross violation of blacks’ civil rights. In the same way, as Will Chamberlin has astutely noted, “We, as a society, do not have to allow private companies to violate Americans’ civil rights.
These companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Amazon – American based companies – who have thrived in our country because of our laws and the special exemptions that have received, have no right to violate any Americans’ civil rights, including freedom of speech no matter how distasteful we might find it. Quite frankly, who died and made those private corporations the arbiter of our Constitutional rights? Perhaps our rights died with the clinking of coins in campaign coffers as our representatives have been, legally, bought off.
Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on big tech censorship.