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Is YouTube (or, for that matter, other Big Tech platforms like Google, Twitter and Facebook) a private entity, and therefore able to arbitrarily determine what it permits users to post and what it chooses to censor or de-platform, or is it somehow beholden to preserving the Constitutionally-protected Right to Free Speech?
That’s the question with which Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is wrestling at the moment, having had two of his speeches removed from YouTube and his account suspended from uploading videos for seven days.
On 12 August JusttheNews.com reported on a conference call with Senator Paul two days earlier, in which the senator told how his posted speeches, which had openly challenged and disputed Dr. Anthony Fauci’s dictums regarding masks and vaccinations, had been summarily pulled from view.
This was hardly the first—or last—adversarial encounter between Sen. Paul and Dr. Fauci; consider the exchange TJ reported, on 18 May 2021, in “BATSH*T CRAZY: WUHAN WALLS CLOSING IN AROUND FAUCI.”
According to Sen. Paul, YouTube’s action made “the real debate” not about the effectiveness of various masks and whether their use should be mandated, nor about similar concerns regarding vaccines, but about censorship and the First Amendment.
“I’ve actually been one who thinks private entities really do possess this power as part of private property,” he said, “but it doesn’t make me any less angry.”
Senator Paul said he sees a pattern of censorship on Google properties (Google is the parent company of YouTube, having acquired it in 2006), and believes that, in stifling criticism of the government’s official COVID policies (as expressed by the government’s mouthpiece, Dr. Fauci), YouTube had become “an organ of the government.”
“I think, for the most part, the First Amendment doesn’t apply to these entities,” Paul said. He explained further:
“But… if they are taking CDC pronouncements”—which Sen Paul believes have become highly politicized, and to which he believes there exist scientific grounds for dispute—and “if they are taking government edicts and enforcing them, are they a private entity any longer, or are they becoming an organ of the government? I think it’s terrible for free speech.”
TREND FORECAST: We have written extensively about the censorship trend and how it would increase. In the 11 December 2018 Trends Journal article, “CENSORSHIP 2019,” we forecast the proliferation of internet censorship across the globe:
“Freedom of speech? Freedom of Expression? Forget about it! From the United States to China, from New Zealand to Nepal, Censorship is a megatrend. For well over a year, social media giants and governments have been silencing voices that challenge establishment agendas.”
In our 21 January 2020 issue, we doubled down on the forecast, stating:
Our “Censorship” Top Trend of 2019 has now become a way of life: unchallenged and barely reported by the mainstream media, who are included among social media giants as the chief censors banning those who don’t tow their party lines and special interests.
As the Trends Journal has been warning for years, Silicon Valley is silencing users on the internet who dare challenge the official narrative. Unfortunately, ever since the politicians and Presstitutes started the COVID War, censorship has increased dramatically.
The degree of censorship muzzling the globe is now potentially so comprehensive that it poses an imminent threat to the fundamental concept of freedom.
TREND FORECAST: Governments across the globe, regardless of what political doctrine they profess, in collusion with social media giants, will accelerate the Censorship 2019 trend.
While Google, Facebook and Twitter will dominate market share for the foreseeable future, market gaps will widen. They’re ready to be filled by nimble, trustworthy First Amendment-driven OnTrendpreneurs® having 2020 foresight to host sites to circumvent the government/media monopolies.
Beyond the issues of censorship, the Internet has and will serve as the launch pad for major populist revolutions against established political parties, multinationals and globalist interests. New websites and hosting companies “of the people, by the people and for the people” will gain healthy market share.