The left wing cancel culture era was stupid, annoying, and wrong, and this upcoming right wing era is bound to be much more stupid, annoying, and wrong.
I, too, remember when Obama has the FCC commissioner threaten to revoke broadcast licenses for the coverage of his tan suit.
This type of both-sides-ism is dumb, especially here when one side is using the power of the federal government to get dissenting voices taken off the air.
I see this "high-ranking elected officials" vs. "A few anonymous nobodies on Reddit and Twitter (now Bluesky I guess)" type of false equivalence all the time.
In the 2019 through at least 2022, Government agencies were "recommending" and "cautioning" social media companies on topics such as COVID and stories about laptops.
2. There is an important difference between a bureaucrat calling up someone at Facebook at arguing a position about policy and the chair of the FCC threatening to remove broadcast licenses. Notable, Supreme Court has even weighed in on the former and found it well within the rights of the government to do.
I included the earlier dates to capture the various government agencies comments on Hunter Biden's laptop, which I doubt that you can claim Trump was directing.
As for point 2, I am not aware of any of the government directed censorship going reaching the Supreme Court.
>On July 20, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield appeared on MSNBC. Host Mika Brzezinski asked Bedingfield about Biden's efforts to counter vaccine misinformation; apparently dissatisfied with Bedingfield's response that Biden would continue to "call it out," Brzezinski raised the specter of amending Section 230—the federal statute that shields tech platforms from liability—in order to punish social media companies explicitly.
>In April 2021, White House advisers met with Twitter content moderators. The moderators believed the meeting had gone well, but noted in a private Slack discussion that they had fielded "one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn't been kicked off from the platform."
Is there a difference between the White House stating they are looking at Section 230 and asking why this one guy has not been banned?
False speech does not have the same Constitutional protections as true speech. That's why, for example, you can be prosecuted for defamation, fraud, or false advertising.
However, the Constitution also sometimes protects intentionally false speech such as parody and comedy.
"Upcoming"? The right has been practicing cancel culture at least since the 1950s with McCarthyism.
And there's a huge difference between someone getting cancelled due to social pressure, vs. getting cancelled because the government is trying to silence your speech.
There was no equivalency. That’s the bogeyman people conjured in their heads. I clarified a couple words to save those people from their anxious imaginations.
Listen, we are allowed to not support businesses or personalities that we find odious. Everyone does it.
This collaboration between corporations and the government to silence political dissent is something else entirely so can we please not “both sides” this ?
"Upcoming right-wing era" like conservatives haven't been "canceling" Starbucks over Christmas, any retailer who shows an ounce of support for the LGBTQ communities, etc., for years?
Yeah, they’ve always been tantruming over things that scare them. But I think it’s going to be a considerably more distinct era, particularly as the Americans elected an enabler of it who will wield the executive to help them prosecute their grievances.
Remind us what canceled right wing celebrity figure that is in line with Jimmy Kimmel’s firing. Maybe Scott Baio? No wait, maybe that guy from Hercules?
They bankrupted Alex Jones and Rudy Giuliani, paraded Steve Bannon in handcuffs. Kicked people with even moderate right wing opinions off social media.
I fully disagree with cancelling Kimmel due to any governmental pressure (if that's what happened) and I'm absolutely horrified with the firings that are being gloated about at the moment but let's not pretend here. The left was very much out of bounds on the cancelling. Which doesn't make it any better when the right does it.
I really think this needs to stop. It's not the society we want to live in. People need to be able to express controversial or disagreeable opinions and I don't care what ideology they are.
Oh lord. Alex jones was sued into oblivion by the victims he tormented. Rightfully so. Rudy ruined a couple of faultless election workers life’s and was successfully sued for defamation. Rightfully so.
These excuses to go after political opponents leads to a very bad place. I will keep repeating this and hope it soaks in because it's a very important concept in a free society.
Defamation lawsuit, defamation lawsuit, money laundering, and no one specific. I'm not sure how this is in any way due to the left. Are sandy hook parents agents of the left in the reality you believe in? Is money laundering not a crime?
