YouTube star Jake Paul slams social media censorship of influencer Andrew Tate

By maryvillarealdw // 2022-09-16

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YouTube star Jake Paul has denounced the curtailing of freedom of speech on social media. He specifically expressed his opposition to the social media censorship of influencer Andrew Tate. "I don't roll with Andrew Tate, but I roll with free speech," Paul said. Tate was recently banned from all social media platforms – and even from banks, Skype, AirBnB and Uber. No matter how people are supposed to disagree with someone's thoughts or opinions, censorship is undemocratic and un-American. Paul had been very vocal in the past about the failed policies of the Biden administration, which led to the "highest gas prices, worst inflation, plummeting crypto prices, highest rent prices ever and creating new and incomprehensible language." In an interview with the Gateway Pundit's Jordan Conradson, Paul was asked about the attempts to censor Americans by Big Tech companies and the current administration. "I think the state of our society is in a really interesting place and a bad place at that. Simply put, I don't think there should be censorship. And the fact that these privately held companies can just take someone right off of their platform is f**ked up. And in fact, the scary part about it is even speaking up against them — like I am currently doing — could get me censored," Paul said. He went on to take a swipe at Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and mainstream media. "So we really don’t have real, true freedom of speech anymore, which is scary. And personally, you just see Mark Zuckerberg admit to it live on Joe Rogan, and the news wasn't really talked about. So, all of these media platforms have controlled narratives by people who are paying them in their pockets." This was in reference to Mark Zuckerberg previously admitting to Joe Rogan that Facebook algorithmically censored the Hunter Biden laptop story for seven days based on a request from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to protect the Bidens at a critical time.

Jawboning and controlling the narrative

This was not the only time Facebook censored something to control the narrative. In July 2021, Biden accused Facebook of spreading misinformation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine, and the administration has used the White House podiums to make bold and inexact claims about the harm posed by social media companies, either implicitly or explicitly demanding they change their content moderation practices to go in line with the administration's preferences. This type of government pressure that attempts to sway the decisions of private platforms and limit the publication of disfavored speech is known as "jawboning," and was subject to a report by Cato Institute policy analyst, Will Duffield. Left unchecked, Duffield posited that jawboning can become "normalized as an extraconstitutional method of speech regulation." He said: "Jawboning occurs when a government official threatens to use his or her power—be it the power to prosecute, regulate, or legislate—to compel someone to take actions that the state official cannot. Jawboning is dangerous because it allows government officials to assume powers not granted to them by law." Duffield also tracked other examples of jawboning, such as the attempts of censorship by politicians. While not every demand comes with threats, all of them were made in the course of a discussion about potential social media regulation. Few platforms have been resistant to government demands, with cloud-based instant messaging service Telegram being one of them. However, Duffield noted that Telegram is not based in the U.S., and therefore has less reason to comply with its laws compared to other platforms like Facebook and Twitter. (Related: Facebook whistleblower reveals "Fact checkers" trained to censor conservatives exclusively.) This makes Telegram the exception to the rule as congressional staffers are now pressuring social media employees for content moderation behind closed doors. Watch the video below to see Mark Zuckerberg admit censorship in Facebook's algorithm. This video is from the BCWILDFIRE channel on Brighteon.com.

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Jawboning and controlling the narrative

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