In the land of humongous internet platforms owned by billionaires, Americans have basically gone along with the rules. It does not take much to get kicked off of Facebook or to have a person’s audience whittled down to next to nothing. Yet, there are people completely unrestrained by any rules, take Donald Trump for example. Sad to say, the commander-in-chief of the free world’s hate speech has bled all over the internet and our nation.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg hung out with The Donald in the White House, and all of a sudden, the president had cart balance to write whatever he wished, no matter whom it endangered. That has been the story of POTUS for his entire life.
People have several options:
- They can quit using the platform — no, that is an idea of last resort.
- They can urge their representatives in Congress to put the same restraints on the platforms as the giant utility companies have to follow — like that is going to work with Senate Majority Leader, the self-described Grim Reaper Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at the door of the Senate squeezing the life out of any House legislation that dares to knock.
- They can tell advertisers they will not buy the products unless they quit advertising in places filled with hate speech. Public outcry appears to be working.
The online comment forum Reddit is one of the most popular websites around. Yet, Monday it banned a Donald Trump forum as part of its war on hate speech. It banned the Trump forum, called The_Donald because it promoted violence and trashed every other Reddit rule. The president and apparently enjoyed himself as he “antagonized” both at Reddit and in other forums.
Reddit released a statement indicating this was not the first time it had tried to rein in the president before:
‘CEO Steve Huffman said earlier this month that Reddit was working with moderators to explicitly address hate speech.’
The San Francisco-based forum’s crackdown on Trump was part of a major “purge” of 2,000 forums. They were identified as “subreddits.” Most of them were either completely inactive or had so few members it was not worth their while.
It also appears that major advertisers have begun limiting their buys after a civil-rights group called for a boycott of Facebook, which has not limited the president’s racist and violent content and propaganda. Even that has begun to shift.
The Ford Motor Company halted all “national social media advertising” on Monday for the next month. Ford said hate speech, violent, and racially injustice content needs to be removed.
Amazon owns Twitch the live-streaming forum. According to PBS:
‘[It] banned Trump for violating its hateful conduct rules. Twitch pointed to comments made in two rallies that were posted on the site. One was at a recent rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Trump mentioned “a very tough hombre” breaking into someone’s home.’
Amazon showed another inappropriate message:
‘The other was from a 2015 campaign rally that was recently reposted on Twitch, in which Trump said Mexico sends people to the U.S. that are rapists and bring drugs to the country. Twitch declined to say how long the suspension will last.’
White nationalists have been banned on Reddit in the past. Yet, Americans were responsible for taking back the net where everyone shares the rules equally. Reddit banned its largest subreddit, belonging to Trump, because he refused to cooperate with the company’s compliance rules, according to The Guardian:
‘[It had] consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average.’
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