https://bolenreport.com/into-the-darkness-the-great-facebook-purge-of-2020/
The “Silencing” Of America?…
Health and Freedom Speech Blocked
How I Learned to Live in American Political Apartheid as a Banned Unperson In a Virtual Internment Camp… COVID mandates and lockdowns jeapardize our health and our freedom...
2022 Update: here are my new Telegram.org sites:
https://t.me/redpillcrusaders
https://t.me/opensourcetruth
I am one of the thousands of health and freedom advocates banned by Facebook last week.
After about ten years as a loyal Facebook user, as Admin for a half-dozen groups and enjoying the social connections it offered to my wide-spread family, a couple of days ago I was expelled from Facebook suddenly — along with my nephew, Jeff. #FacebookPurge
Communications with relatives and friends were stricken – all of them. And, suddenly, I had become a banned unperson.
All of my groups and pages were abolished, including pages for recognized exempt organizations, including churches! When they reach out to make contact with me, or share something with me, my friends and family are learning I am been turned into a Facebook Unperson. Photos, videos, shared memories, planned events, gone. I imagine it might feel like this to be violated. I imagine it might feel like this to be a freedom advocate in apartheid-era South Africa or the happily-gone Soviet Union — singled out as a Banned Unperson.
Sometime that afternoon, I visited Facebook I was astonished to learn that I had been terminated.
There was a link to appeal. I immediately did so, sending a copy of my passport as requested. Within seconds a message popped on the screen: no appeal was allowed. No review was possible. Obviously preset, the social violation dictate was final. I was terminated with extreme prejudice.
Here is that arbitrary, capricious, fully automatic, act of ultimate censorship:
Why? What had I done to be singled out? In the Kafkaesque landscape of arbitrary social media violation, all you can do is try to piece hints and clues together – and never really know the answer.
Could it be because, along with my nephew Jeff, I was an Admin of a group with over 200,000 members called “Red Pill Crusaders”? Perhaps my “Free Speech Crime” is that I am a strong advocate for the Right of Informed Consent, health freedom and vaccine freedom of choice?
Or was the sin that I was recently sharing the facts about how the Americans with Disabilities Act allows people to refuse to be masked and silenced —
https://tinyurl.com/maskexemption.
Of course, it might have been my use of the hashtag #BillionBribeBiden. So while the exact crime(s) are unclear, the class of crime seems obvious: exercising my First Amendment rights.
My guess is that I was purged, at least in part…
…because I have forthrightly asserted that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the like, while “private companies” at least in name, are not really private actors at all, but are crony corporations favored and supported by taxpayer dollars and resources, acting under color of law, making commercial and political use of our Internet Commons while censoring political and other opinion speech as well as scientific discourse for their own self-interest, and no other reason.
Perhaps it is because I have asserted numerous times that the Telecommunications Act (“the Act”) does not allow these deep state companies to censor the speech of users of the Internet Commons. I believe, as a libertarian and retired lawyer that the Common Law is binding on all and clearly forbids such behavior. The Act includes infamous Section 230 which supposedly “protects” free speech while really giving the crony companies the excuse to violate free speech.
The language of the statute says that the service providers are not responsible for the content their users post…
…if they do not monitor or moderate that content, but merely act as a public utility transmitting same. Then the law goes on to allow the companies to remove, without penalty, “pornography or other objectionable materials.”
It’s the last phrase, “other objectionable materials” that the companies choose to act as if they are allowed to ban people, opinions, facts, science and ideas. However, to reach that irrational conclusion they must ignore the normal rules of statutory construction.
Clearly “other objectionable materials” must be read in the context of “pornography.” Our jurisprudence distinguishes between pornography – which is not protected speech – and political and opinion speech and scientific discourse which is protected from government censorship. That means that it is protected from government censorship even when apparently “private” agents of state power (in this case, Facebook) engage in the censorship. Those companies are legally “creatures of the state” operating under the corporate franchise provided by the government with powers, such as limited liability, not available to corporations that truly are private actors. The phrase “other objectionable materials” must be read to only include non-speech such as pornography.
The Big Media corporations are instruments of, and serve, entrenched deep state power and need to be held accountable.
They must be held to respect freedom of speech or all government support and funding, advantages and protection must be withdrawn from them immediately
Remember, the First Amendment does not create the right to freedom of speech. It merely recognizes the pre-existing natural right and forbids Congress (and through the 14th Amendment, the States and all creatures of the state acting under color of law) from “abridging the freedom of speech.”
Just a few weeks ago I pointed that out to the Federal Communications Commission, as one of the first to comment in support of President Trump’s formal Petition to the FCC asking the agency to review Section 230 and refine its enforcement to stop the censorship. My comments are posted at the FCC web site here: https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/1080792043737/Ralph%20Fucetola.pdf
Could that have provoked the FBV? Once I start to think that way, the chilling effect something like a FBV has (and is intended to have) on legitimate discourse is evident.
There is a bill pending before Congress that would change the operative words of Section 230 from “otherwise objectionable” to “otherwise unlawful” – a huge and very important difference. You can support that change by signing the White House Petition, here: http://www.opensourcetruth.com/free-speech-petition/
Do you think that my advocacy for free speech might have played a role in my banning?
Is sharing a considered opinion on a government forum punishable by FBV? Is that what the First Amendment means now? For the sake of our Republic, I sincerely hope not.
What to do next? Boycott Big Fascist Tech. Use alternatives to it that do not censor. I am moving my social media activities to www.Minds.com — the blockchain-friendly, completely uncensored social media — my user name is RalphFucetolaJD.
There my advocacy, my social and family contacts and the exempt organizations and churches with which I work can find refuge and freedom of speech. See you there.
The Great Facebook Purge of 2020 has freed me from… Facebook!
About that here: http://www.opensourcetruth.com/free-from-facebook-shadow-banning-and-mind-control/
This article also posted here: http://www.opensourcetruth.com/facebook-purge/
PS — The latest news: the FCC has just announced it will take up the issue of enforcing Section 230. Will that be too late for the election? Will it be too late for me and thousands of other Banned Unpersons? We shall see… https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/fcc-moves-to-clarify-section-230-law-after-censoring-of-post-story/
