There is no doubt that Facebook has been silencing the voices of conservatives who refuse to toe the line of groupthink and mind-numbing liberalism like cows being led to the slaughterhouse. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, more people have turned to social media as a primary source of communication than any other time in history. But now, it appears they’ve censored the wrong person.
Candace Owens has hired Todd McMurtry, the attorney who represented Nick Sandmann of Covington Catholic High School when he was falsely and maliciously slandered by NBC news anchors and others. McMurtry recently won 275 million dollars against NBC on behalf of Sandmann and now, Candace Owens is in on the action.
The issue at stake is whether or not Facebook and social media giants are utilities or publishers. If social media companies are acting as a utility — like that of a telephone company — then they should be regulated by the FCC and the Communications Act of 1934 which would not allow them to censor any speech that is not prohibited by law. Further, if social media is deemed a utility, they are not held legally liable for the information published on their platform.
On the other hand, if social media is acting as a publisher, they have a right to allow and censor whatever they please on their platform. However, the caveat is that they should then be held legally responsible for everything published on their platform. Therefore, anything illegal — such as terrorism, illicit drug sales, or illicit erotica — the company would be held responsible for. Policing such things would be a massive undertaking that a social media company would probably not want on their plate.
But Facebook is claiming that it’s a utility while operating as a publisher in some areas. They claim they are taking responsibility for such things as “hate speech” when, in fact, they are merely censoring that which they don’t like while ignoring what they don’t have the time, resources, or interest to police.
Candace Owens seems to be taking them to task on this, finally. She tweeted below:
