House Democrats demand Facebook, Twitter take down Trump tweet for being "deceptive and misleading"

4 years ago
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Hi, I'm Anthony Galli and Trump recently shared an edited video of Nancy Pelosi ripping up the State of the Union address…

Pelosi's deputy chief of staff then responded, “The latest fake video of Speaker Pelosi is deliberately designed to mislead and lie to the American people, and every day that these platforms refuse to take it down is another reminder that they care more about their shareholders’ interests than the public’s interests.”

(democrats censor donald trump twitter)

House Democrats also took up the torch to shut down free speech...

“Twitter must take this misleading video about Speaker Pelosi down now,” he continued, “Falsity has never been a part of our 1st Amendment tradition.”

But ironically Congressman Khanna is making a factually false statement. All he has to do is read up on how the newspaper industry operated during the Revolutionary era or the Yellow Journalism era. And then to my surprise Facebook responded to Hammill,

"Sorry, are you suggesting the President didn’t make those remarks and the Speaker didn’t rip the speech?”

"What planet are you living on? This is deceptively altered. Take it down.”

But regardless of your party affiliation, all freedom lovers should STAUNCHLY stand against the house democrats here. I mean have they ever watched an episode of Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Bill Maher, etc? These guys are constantly doctoring videos for humorous or dramatic effect…

(democrats censor donald trump twitter)

So as you could see those recent videos CLEARLY meet the house democrat’s criteria of being deceptively edited and misleading so why are they not demanding their removal too?

So do we really want the selective enforcement of censorship rules based upon who is doing the demanding? Do I need to be a government official to warrant a response from Facebook and Twitter?

The underlying attitude of the people’s representatives seems to be that the people are too stup*d to realize the video was altered, but does anyone seriously think Nancy Pelosi was ripping up the speech after every story? And if somehow you thought it was real then shouldn’t your alarm bells have gone off enough to make you verify its truthfulness? And if not, then isn’t our real problem a lack of education instead of a lack of censorship?

If a sizable chunk of American voters were seriously that naive to believe it’s real, which I don’t buy, then maybe we shouldn’t be putting a bandaid over the deeper problem, especially because by doing so the problem would get worse.

Now Facebook deserves praise for standing their ground, but I don’t love their logic either because it sounds like they’re suggesting that they would’ve taken it down if the “President didn’t make those remarks and the Speaker didn’t rip the speech.”

(democrats censor donald trump twitter)

But Twitter and Facebook should be social media platforms; not fact checkers! I know this idea makes some people uncomfortable as they ponder the potential of such deceptive technologies as Deepfake. But instead of social media companies selectively removing content it deems “misleading” it could allow independent companies to design widgets that label videos as such. Because the bottomline is as soon as the government starts demanding social media companies take down “fake news” then we end up in a place where the powerful are amplified and the meek silenced.

This is, after all, the historical norm. But rather than fulfilling the dystopian prophesies of Idiocracy and Wall-E where oligarchs expect nothing from their people… How about we raise the bar? And give power to the people! And with this power will come the responsibility to think critically whereby we should inscribe into every capital building the age-old wisdom of Abraham Lincoln, ”Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”

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