Big Tech proves it can censor anyone, at any time, for any reason – and that is a scary reality

The New York Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801 and is America’s oldest continuously published newspapers.

However, in mid-October, when the New York Post posted a series of tweets about emails discovered on an abandoned laptop owned by presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, Twitter and Facebook censored the iconic media outlet. Twitter locked the New York Post out of its account for weeks and blocked other users from sharing the article. Facebook’s policy communications manager, Andy Stone, said that Facebook is taking steps to reduce the circulation of the story.

These emails included various communications that Hunter Biden had while serving as a board member and adviser to Burisma, a major Ukrainian energy company. Hunter Biden has been accused of making millions of dollars in shady deals in a number of foreign countries, the most high-profile of which was his work with Burisma, performed at the same time his father served as U.S. vice president and oversaw Ukrainian policy for the Obama administration.

The New York Post article reported the existence of an email (and showed a screenshot) that showed that Joe Biden had met in person with a top executive at Burisma. That was in direct contrast to Joe Biden’s public statement that he has “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” Reporters Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge also included a screenshot of an email from May 2014 where that same Burisma executive, Vadym Pozharskyi, asked Hunter Biden for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.

The Biden campaign has denied the validity of the New York Post article and its reporting on the emails, calling them nothing more than a “smear campaign” from the White House, as well as Russian disinformation.

The New York Post had a duty to seek a response from the Bidens before it published the article (which it did), but as a media organization, it also has a responsibility to investigate and report — with integrity — about elected officials and hold them accountable for their actions. As the fourth pillar in America’s unique constitutional republic form of government, the media acts as a healthy check on power, and journalists are expected to live by a code of ethics when seeking out facts and information vital to the public’s business.

The New York Post exposé on the Bidens — based on emails taken from a laptop that Hunter Biden had dropped off at and then never picked up from a Delaware computer repair shop — is a legitimate news story that deserves more reporting, not less.

**On the topic of censorship, check out Falkirk Center’s interview with Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon!

But social media CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey have taken steps to silence these journalists (and those who tried to share the New York Post article), as well as censor the circulation of other news that does not align with a left-leaning agenda.

While they claim that their actions only censor content that violates their own rules of “acceptable” and “true” content for viewers, they are limiting Americans’ right to free speech and the freedom of the press. There is little doubt that the actions they’ve taken to censor the free flow of information in the midst of a presidential campaign can significantly impact the outcome of an election to suit their own desires.

The New York Post incident is only one example of Big Tech censorship targeting people and viewpoints they don’t like. Twitter and Facebook either “flagged, fact-checked, or removed” posts on either President Trump’s personal account or his campaign’s social media platforms at least 65 times between May 2018 and October 2020, but never once have they censored Joe Biden or his campaign, according to a study by the Media Research Center. New Jersey Women for Trump, a private Facebook group with 29,000 followers, was shut down by Facebook on Halloween, just days before the election. The account was reinstated the next day after a firestorm of criticism, but Facebook has yet to explain why the group was canceled in the first place.

And while Twitter is preventing the New York Post from fulfilling its journalistic responsibilities, they continue to allow others with tarnished reputations or those who spew anti-American messages to post content.

These include Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam; Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who supports Nazi ideology and hates minorities; and Nicolas Maduro, the Socialist president of Venezuela who gruesomely tortures dissidents. Most notably, Twitter has provided an unfettered platform for Iran’s oppressive Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khameni, whose tweets routinely call for the violent elimination of Israel and deny the Holocaust.

All of these individuals have been allowed free rein to say anything they wish on personal accounts and to spread their harmful ideas, while the New York Post is being censored for reporting on a case that carries significant implications for one of the most contentious presidential elections in history.

Social media has, unfortunately, become the filter through which Americans consume most of their information — a filter through which Zuckerberg and Dorsey allow anti-American messages but not the speech of American citizens and organizations utilizing their First Amendment rights.

Why does this matter? Because censorship runs completely counter to what it means to live in a free society. If Big Tech executives and employees can silence the New York Post, one of the largest daily newspapers by circulation in America, they can silence anyone they want, whenever they want, for however long they want, and over whatever content they deem to be “untrue” or “unacceptable.”

And that is a scary reality.