President Donald Trump on Friday vulnerable to “monitor” social-media sites for their “censorship of AMERICAN CITIZENS,” a day after Facebook for good prohibited reactionary figures and organizations including the conspiracy theory site InfoWars.
Trump’s subtle threat — delivered in a series of tweets — marked the president’s latest broadside against Si valley, which he has repeatedly suspect of below the belt targeting and removing conservative users and their views. Facebook, Google and Twitter strongly deny the allegations of political bias.
Facebook and the White House did not respond to a request for comment. The First Amendment pertains to government regulation of speech, not technical school giants’ efforts to craft and implement their own policies that seek to prevent harassment and abuse online.
On Thursday, Facebook announced it had for good prohibited users including Louis Farrakhan, the founder of the Nation of Islam who has been suspect of anti-Semitism, on with reactionary figures milo maize maize Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer and Alex Jones, the founder of Infowars. The technical school giant removed their accounts, fan pages and attached groups on Facebook as well as its photo-sharing service Instagram, charging that their presence on the social networking sites had become “dangerous.”
In doing so, Facebook pointed to its efforts to remove users who “promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology.” Before its permanent ban, Facebook had taken more limited action targeting users so much as Jones, who has vulnerable journalists and attacked the victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Jones and others sharply criticized Facebook for its decision.
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For his part, President Trump repeatedly has suspect popular social-networking sites of exhibiting political bias, and vulnerable to regulate Si valley in response. In a private meeting with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last month, Trump repeatedly raised his concerns that the company has removed some of his following, the Post antecedently according. Twitter long has maintained that a user’s follower accounts fluctuate in response to its efforts to combat spam on the site and are not politically motivated.
On Friday, Trump generally tweeted he was “surprised” about Facebook’s decision to ban Paul Joseph Watson, a reactionary YouTube personality who has served as editor-at-large of Infowars.
He besides aforementioned his administration is “looking into” Facebook’s handling of Diamond and Silk, two pro-Trump video bloggers who have charged that the social-networking site has limited the reach of their content. Facebook ab initio labeled their videos as “unsafe,” though it later apologized for the incident and aforementioned last year it tried repeatedly to work with the duo to address their concerns.
Still, the attacks have resonated among the upper echelons of the Republican Party, even prompting GOP lawmakers to hold a series of hearings over the past two years to probe if Si valley censors right-leaning users and news. Earlier Friday, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., discharged off his own tweet that appeared to criticize Facebook for removing reactionary users.