On the 12th November 2020, CNN aired a segment talking about the transition of conservative people moving from the ‘Social Media Giants’ such as Facebook and Twitter to a new site called Parler; a site which claims to allow complete freedom of speech. The irony is that the concerns the CNN journalists had, only speak more truth to the conservative concerns about social media censorship.
Brian Stelter and Pamela Brown (CNN employees) showed deep concern over conservative media and followers moving to a new social media site called Parlour. Parler is a social media site which claims to allow freedom of speech, that does not incite violence, and treats all users equally – no censorship of non-violent posts. The CNN employees described the site as being an ‘echo chamber’ of right wing views and opinions and that the right wing media has now developed a ‘bunker mentality’ since their disagreement with Fox News over the presidential election coverage. Thus, leading them to describe this as a ‘threat to democracy’.
CNN made this claim as Parler has increased its user base within the political right wing and therefore, the majority of thoughts, opinions and facts shared will be heavily conservative. This, along with the ever decreasing amount of conservatives on other platforms like Facebook and Twitter, will only create an even larger divide between left and right wing views and opinions. If there is no one to contest your way of thinking and are only exposed to a certain viewpoint, then your views will become more polarised and possibly be more radical. On the surface, this seems like a fair assessment of the situation, but there are deeper concerns that CNN did not and would not share publicly.
Facebook and Twitter are the two social media giants outside of Google. Almost every person uses their sites and other products such as Instagram. The reason more conservatives are leaving these sites is because the people they follow are being censored on a regular basis. Facebook and Twitter regularly defend their decisions to censor these people with claims that the post violates certain policies. We have seen this more and more, especially over the election. Facebook and Twitter have regularly censored posts from conservatives for being ‘misleading’ and ‘not entirely true’. Many of Trump’s tweets and posts have either been removed or have had a warning attached to them.
Other conservative accounts such as livesmatterofficial, hodgetwins, prageru and many more have all seen content be removed or accompanied by a warning. Even other Republicans such as Dan Crenshaw and Ted Cruz have been censored. Facebook and Twitter censor views and opinions of people that do not agree with a certain narrative. This has been seen on the livesmatterofficial instagram page, where posts about violence being invoked by BLM and ANTIFA protestors at the million MAGA march on 14th November 2020, were removed from their page. No warning attached, just removed. This violence occurred directly after Biden’s speech about civility and peace. The media want you to believe this is true and therefore any post that destroys that narrative must be suppressed and censored. Only conservatives that challenge leftist ideology and narratives get silenced. Conservatives may feel even more suppressed when they hear of Facebook’s failed attempts to censor the Iranian President and media’s posts denying the existence of the Holocaust during WW2.
The truth behind CNN’s concerns, is that if conservatives move their opinions, content and facts to a site that is not controlled by the far left, then how do you censor them? How do you stop political moderates from siding with conservative values and views? CNN are scared that truth will destroy future narratives. It is about control and always has been. If you can forcibly feed people a one sided view of every single event on the planet, you can manipulate thoughts, beliefs, actions and the facts. Like I said previously, if you only hear news and opinions from one side, your views will become more polarised and possibly radical. That is happening now and has been happening for a long period of time, but the MSM and social media giants will try to convince you that this is problem being created by conservatives or people of a differing opinion.
Independent Thinking 