A storm is raging in social-media-land, and it is a fearsome storm, indeed! Over the weekend just passed, a large number of people and organizations found themselves banned or suspended from various media platforms. Even Daniel MacAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute, received a temporary Twitter ban for retweeting someone else's comments. That ban had now been lifted, with Twitter claiming it was 'an error'.
Bwahahahaha!!! The shit-storm these social media companies' actions has unleashed is more than likely the reason for Twitter back-walking on MacAdams' ban. They touched one that was too hot for them, there, and they know it. But, they had to try, if only to see how far they could push it. Unlike Alex Jones' fan-base, Ron Paul's can't be branded as a pack of foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics that the internet needs protecting from. When you go after people affiliated with an affable octogenarian, well, it looks pretty damned bad.
The Twitter-criminal that Mr. MacAdams was attempting to support in his retweeted tweet, Peter Van Buren, wasn't so lucky. His twitter career is over, despite a letter of protest sent to Twitter's board of directors (see contents of the letter here).
As for Alex Jones, you would have to be an absolute idiot not to expect some sort of massive push-back by his followers. These are not the type of people who will be satisfied with sending politely worded letters of protest, and YouTube and its cohorts should be expecting it. This was not done simply because Mr. Jones is offensive and weird in the extreme. Something truly nasty is afoot in the land of social media, and we would all do well to wait for the other shoe to drop before hypothesizing as to what it might be.
What might be going on put to the side, and the fact that Jones and Mac Adams both proudly identify as 'libertarian' being well-noted, there are many people who are suddenly trying to work around the worn-out old argument that these companies are private companies, and thus, are free to refuse service to anyone they please. The cacophony is getting pretty loud and confused. People who, before the ban, were quick to point out the private nature of social media companies, and equally quick to pay lip service to those companies' right to go around banning whomever they please, are now putting forth the idea that these companies are like 'town squares' and that something has to be done to prevent them from kicking off whomever they please. Now that they have fallen under the ban, themselves, that is.
Hmmm... . Would real libertarians be advocating that? To the Ron Paul Institute's credit, it isn't. It's going the route of encouraging entrepreneurs to come up with alternative options to centralized social media sites. But the others... .
Yes, I digress. I always do. When this shit hit the fan, I immediately thought of something else; I thought of bakers and florists.
Yes, bakers and florists! In particular, bakers and florists who have recently been dragged to court for refusing to cater gay and lesbian weddings. After all, they were private companies, and they had their own 'terms of service' (so to speak). If it is okay for Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to kick people off because their actions violate 'community standards', then the same right should be applied to bakers and florists. This is not a facile argument. The owners of those companies had specific moral standards, and they refused service based on those standards. Yet, huge social media companies are permitted to do just that - or at least use the excuse that something was offensive based on their own community beliefs and standards.
Oh, hypocrisy knows no limits when it serves a political agenda!
I am going to let you know a little secret. Weddings are the most profitable business that a florist gets. Florists count on them to underwrite much of the year's expenses. No florist turns away that type of business simply out of spite, and neither do bakers. Big, big money, there. Moreover, florists and bakers are a dime a dozen. Finding someone else to take your business is no problem whatsoever - unless, of course, your wedding is in peak season and you arrive on their doorstep the night before the ceremony.
That is the beauty of a competitive market place. If someone won't serve you, you can go elsewhere. That is, unless you specifically targeted that establishment because you know it wouldn't serve you, and you wanted to stir up trouble for it.
Social media is, grantedly, not such a market place. But, is it right to declare it a town square? No! Monopolies need to be broken up, and there is little doubt that social media companies acted in concert this past weekend. The solution is not to socialize them (that is, declare them public property). It is to prevent them from ganging up, and/or blocking other companies from entering into the market place. Very few readers will remember Microsoft being forced to break itself up under anti-combines laws back in the 1990s, but it would do those readers well to look into that instead of screaming for what is, effectively, the nationalization of these companies.
Or, maybe this is what it is all really about? A means to subconsciously converting the free-enterprise minded to a socialist mindset?
As a final note here, I would like to stress, once again, that I am a born and raised Quebecer. I spent protracted amounts of time in Norway, and a little more time in Germany when I was in my twenties, but I am a Quebecer by inclination and definition. Quebec is the prime example of what happens when socialist ideas fail. So, now, in order to build up an economy that tanked because of political instability, the great white socialist-dreaming province of Quebec is pushing entrepreneurship among the young, immigrants, and anyone else who can scrape up enough money to start a local business. That, at least, is one government-led initiative that makes sound economic sense. Hurray! At long last! You don't know how crazy things have gotten here at times!
Let me explain something. If a well is in the middle of a village, and the whole village depends on it, then the whole village has a say in what is done with it. If the well is in the outlying areas, and everyone needs it, then no one can lay claim to it, and cut off water to the rest, or charge for that water. We need water to live! If a farmer digs a well on his own land, so that he does not need to use the local well, then it is his well - unless he dug in such a way that it taps into the local supply and takes more than his fair share. As a community, we can also build hydro-electric power stations (or windmill farms), and then each pay our fair share of the costs of maintenance, upkeep, and personal usage. That is normal community living.
Snatching something someone else has made is not. The farmer who dug his own well on his own land is not obliged to allow other farmers to use it. The ancient rules of hospitality would dictate that he allows a traveler a drink from the well, but not a regular horde of tourists arriving on tour buses every day at noon. The people organizing those tours must compensate him if he chooses to allow them access. If, on the other hand, the farmer intentionally sets out to purchase all the water-bearing land for miles around in order to bring all the wells in the area under his sole control, then it is up to the community to put a stop to his acquisitions. They would be wise to do so.
That, by the way, is the thinking behind anti-combines laws. Gross monopolies are never in the interests of a healthy economy, and forcibly breaking them up when they start acting like they did this past weekend used to be considered the sane thing to do. Let us hope that some people have enough sense to force them smaller, not turn them into public utilities. Google is not water. It's just a company that has grown to big for its britches, and too damned arrogant, after eating all the competition.
Image: Pixabay