Pamela Geller, American Thinker: Urgent Case for Legislation against Facebook and Google

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Read my latest over at The American Thinker. We are seeing an unprecedented erosion in our First Amendment rights, increasingly prohibiting the flow of ideas and free expression in the public square (social media). Run by left-wing self-possessed snowflakes, social media giants are indulging their worst autocratic impulses. And because they can, it is getting worse. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Having grown up in the 1970s, I can tell you it was a vastly different country then. It was free. But we aren’t any no longer, and it is time we took back what is ours — our unalienable freedoms.

January 30, 2018

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The Urgent Case for Legislation against Facebook and Google

By Pamela Geller, American Thinker

Having been one of the early targets of social media censorship on Facebook, YouTube et al, I have advocated for anti-trust action against these bullying behemoths. It is good to see establishment outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and National Review coming to the same conclusion, or at least asking the same questions.

Just this week, Facebook launched its latest of many attacks on my news site, the Geller Report. It labeled my site as “spam” and removed every Geller Report post — thousands upon thousands of them, going back years – from Facebook. It also blocked any Facebook member from sharing links to the Geller Report. The ramping up of the shutting-down of sites like mine is neither random nor personal. The timing is telling. The left is gearing up for the 2018 midterm elections, and they mean to shut down whatever outlet or voice that helped elect President Trump, the greatest upset in left-wing history.

In fighting this shutdown, we had to go back to the drawing board in our lawsuit against these social media giants. The basis of our suit was challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) under the First Amendment, which provides immunity from lawsuits to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, thereby permitting these social media giants to engage in government-sanctioned censorship and discriminatory business practices free from legal challenge.

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Facebook and Google take in roughly half of all Internet ad revenue. According to the Wall Street Journal:

In the U.S., Alphabet Inc.’s Google drives 89% of internet search; 95% of young adults on the internet use a Facebook Inc. product; and Amazon.com Inc. now accounts for 75% of electronic book sales. Those firms that aren’t monopolists are duopolists: Google and Facebook absorbed 63% of online ad spending last year; Google and Apple Inc. provide 99% of mobile phone operating systems; while Apple and Microsoft Corp. supply 95% of desktop operating systems.

Both companies routinely censor and spy on their customers, “massaging everything from the daily news to what we should buy.” In the last century, the telephone was our “computer,” and Ma Bell was how we communicated. That said, would the American people (or the government) have tolerated AT&T spying on our phone calls and then pulling our communication privileges if we expressed dissenting opinions? That is exactly what we are suffering today.

Ma Bell was broken up by the government, albeit for different reasons. But it can and should be done.

It’s not a little ironic that, according to Breitbart:

AT&T has called for an “Internet Bill of Rights” and argued that Facebook and Google should also be subjected to rules that would prevent unfair censorship on their platforms.

AT&T, one of the largest telecommunications companies, called for Congress to enact an “Internet Bill of Rights” which would subject Facebook, Google, and other content providers to rules that would prevent unfair censorship on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Comcast or AT&T as well as content providers such as Facebook and Google.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson wrote, “Congressional action is needed to establish an ‘Internet Bill of Rights’ that applies to all internet companies and guarantees neutrality, transparency, openness, non-discrimination and privacy protection for all internet users.”

Stephenson posted the ad in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other national news outlets on Wednesday.

We must get behind this — all of us — and fast. Because what is happening is being engineered at the government level. A chief officer from a major American communications company went to the terror state of Pakistan to assure the Pakistani government that Facebook would adhere to the sharia. The commitment was given by Vice President of Facebook Joel Kaplan, who called on Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. “Facebook has reiterated its commitment to keep the platform safe and promote values that are in congruence with its community standards.”

Why the block? Because under Islamic law, you cannot criticize Islam. Facebook adhering to the most extreme and brutal ideology on the face of the earth should trouble all of us, because Mark Zuckerberg has immense power. He controls the flow of information.

Early last year, I wrote: “The US government has used anti-trust laws to break up monopolies. They ought to break up Facebook. Section 2 of the Sherman Act highlights particular results deemed anticompetitive by nature and prohibits actions that ‘shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations.’ Couldn’t the same be applied to information? The United States government took down Standard Oil, Alcoa, Northern Securities, the American Tobacco Company and many others without nearly the power that Facebook has.”

NRO has come to that same conclusion:

Tech companies such as Google and Facebook are also utilities of sorts that provide essential services. They depend on the free use of public airwaves. Yet they are subject to little oversight; they simply make up their own rules as they go along. Antitrust laws prohibit one corporation from unfairly devouring its competition, capturing most of its market, and then price-gouging as it sees fit without fear of competition. Google has all but destroyed its search-engine competitors in the same manner that Facebook has driven out competing social media.

Clearly Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, and Jeff Bezos are contemporary “robber barons.” So why are they not smeared, defamed, and reviled like the robber barons of yesteryear? Says NRO:

Why are huge tech companies seemingly exempt from the rules that older corporations must follow? First, their CEOs wisely cultivate the image of hipsters. The public sees them more as aging teenagers in T-shirts, turtlenecks, and flip-flops than as updated versions of J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, or other robber barons of the past. Second, the tech industry’s hierarchy is politically progressive.

In brilliant marketing fashion, the Internet, laptops, tablets, and smartphones have meshed with the hip youth culture of music, television, the movies, universities, and fashion. Think Woodstock rather than Wall Street. Corporate spokesmen at companies such as Twitter and YouTube brag about their social awareness, especially on issues such as radical environmentalism, identity politics, and feminism. Given that the regulatory deep state is mostly a liberal enterprise, the tech industry is seen as an ally of federal bureaucrats and regulators. Think more of Hollywood, the media, and universities than Exxon, General Motors, Koch Industries, and Philip Morris.

The groovy t-shirt-turtleneck vibe may keep the great unwashed under their spell, but it’s the shared political ideology with the left that keeps these corporate managers free from accountability. The WSJ writes that antitrust regulators have a narrow test: Does their size leave consumers worse off? Surmising that if that’s the test, “there isn’t a clear case for going after big tech.”

I disagree. The consumer is far worse off. If we are not free to speak and think in what is today’s Gutenberg press, than we could not be worse off.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report and author of the bestselling book, FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

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AlgorithmicAnalystD
AlgorithmicAnalyst
6 years ago

Sharia Book.

lyda
lyda
4 years ago

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Thorsten
Thorsten
6 years ago

OT: https://www.katjes.de/kontakt/anregung-kritik.html

Image/commercial VIDEO:
Sweets of well known big german company dhimmi’protected’ https://quran.com/9/29-30 Katjes:
‘Veggi’ -> Vegetarian without animal gelatine from pork)

On the other side, the REALLY!! brave women in Iran’SS Tyrany pull ther hijab from their heads to demonstrate against it!!
https://www.gmx.net/magazine/news/hot/katjes-werbung-hidschab-model-wut-veggie-32776830
‘… … sweet Islamization of Germany?

In these, the video is seen as evidence of a progressive Islamization of Germany.

Others suggest that Katjes would trivialize the oppression of Muslim women https://quran.com/4/34 https://quran.com/2/282 (only half worth of men), lumping together religious repression and female_self-determination(alien concept for misogynist allah).

After all, many young and modern Muslims, especially in Western societies, understand the headscarf variant Hijab simply as a fashion_accessory™ and voluntarily_endorse_it™ (if not -> ‘beat them’ https://quran.com/4/34 till honor killing http://schnellmann.org/shafia-mass-honor-killing-to-sharia-law.html ).

They are strengthened not least by the famous top model Halima Aden, which has long created a self-confident trend on the big catwalks from the supposed taboo.

… Bitter enough that sweets now have to serve for the tastelessness(?) of right-wing_populist_Internet-Hetzer™.’ http://www.achtemaldrauf.de (Achte mal drauf -> ‘take a look’)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1j4sSl7Gog

poetcomic1
poetcomic1
6 years ago

“Mark Zuckerberg has immense power. He controls the flow of information.”
I should tell the world what to do, I’m nice.

marlene
marlene
6 years ago
Reply to  poetcomic1

LOL. We’re all nice compared to these tacky techs.

aemoreira1981
aemoreira1981
6 years ago
Reply to  poetcomic1

He doesn’t have power, contrary to what the majority believe.

Loodell
Loodell
3 years ago
Reply to  poetcomic1

Mark Zuckerberg has to do what the powers that be orders him, the same with all media, social media, nations’ leaders, national health advisor, and any top gun of nations.

Suresh
Suresh
6 years ago

Did you know Facebook , twitter, even Google has joined Islamofascist gang http://tinyurl.com/lgp28rs

To censor conservative and Anti-jihadi news to push the islamisation agenda of the Left/Liberal/jihadis funded by saudi/qataris

And conservatives don’t want to fund the alternative media, nor unite to pursue the issue politically or legally……… then act surprised their First amendment is not getting up and fighting for them !

SNOWDIN
SNOWDIN
6 years ago
Reply to  Suresh

You might as well add Yahoo to that list.

felix1999
felix1999
6 years ago

I wish I had allot of money, then I’d go after them.
We are losing our rights and being censored.

R. Arandas
R. Arandas
6 years ago

When Facebook and Google care much more about anti-Islamic material than radical Islamic material, you know it’s a huge and dangerous problem.

Dagonet
Dagonet
6 years ago

Under pisslamic law you can not criticize pisslam? We are NOT under pisslamic law.
F- pisslam!

Cai
Cai
6 years ago
Reply to  Dagonet

‘Not under pisslamic law.’ Technically you are right, but the reality is that it is rushing through our system like a tsunami.

Sunshine Kid
Sunshine Kid
6 years ago

The censorship of those two (and a few others) are the reasons why I have no posts on Face(less)book. Besides, I am not interesting to post on social media such mundane posts such as what I ate or how my bowel movement was. Some people are not only sick, but disgusting, too!

ira
ira
6 years ago

FACEBOOK JUST BANNED ME FOR SOMETHING THEY ALREADY BANNED ME FOR AND I CORRECTED THREE YEARS AGO. THIS TIME THEY USED POSTS FROM 1915. TWITTER JUST BANNED ME FOR “INCITING VIOLENCE” WHICH IS A TOTAL FABRICATION. SO MUCH FOR POSTING THE TRUTH, ESPECIALLY GELLER ARTICLES. 🙂

Cai
Cai
6 years ago
Reply to  ira

1915?

TheOverviewerdotcom
TheOverviewerdotcom
6 years ago

I could not agree with you more, Pamela! I have used the ATT example in a lot of my own writing. Today, all of the Dr. Spock Baby Boomers (Liberals and RINO’s) are on the take from these huge companies, even the FDA. It is no different than the mob extorting money from small store owners in the name of “protection”. The politicians get rich, monopolies abound and ‘We the People’ get screwed! Why not start a petition and use your email lists to get it signed? Not only will I sign it but I will put it out to over 50 Conservative groups that I belong to on Facebook with a combined membership of over 1 million. Thank you, Pamela, for your patriotism, your hard work and your braveness. You are the best!

Cai
Cai
6 years ago

I read an article that stated that ‘Democracy has a life of about 200 years’, and that the demise of democracy is ALWAYS followed by totalitarianism. Isn’t that exactly the process we are witnessing today?

TheOverviewerdotcom
TheOverviewerdotcom
6 years ago
Reply to  Cai

THE DEMISE OF A DEMOCRACY
In 1787 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of
Edinburgh, said this:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

Professor Tyler continued with these EIGHT STEPS TO THE DEMISE OF A
DEMOCRACY: democracy:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;

2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;

4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;

6. From complacency to apathy; (Most good but uninvolved people are here.)
7. From apathy to dependence; (Millions of people are already here.)
8. From dependence to bondage.

Overviewer’s Note: Our Republic (a form of Democracy) does not have to continue to self-destruct, we can stop it! If you want our way of life to persist,

go to http://www.TheOverviewer.com and especially read the page about the Baby
Boomers. It shows how we went wrong and how we can correct the wrong. It
unearths a 70 year old secret about the Baby Boomers that must be known by all Americans if we are to save the greatest country that has ever been.

Cai
Cai
6 years ago
Reply to  Cai

I have watched the progressive destruction of those 3 things over many years but it has sped up in the last few years.

Loodell
Loodell
3 years ago
Reply to  Cai

You have just confirmed Bible prophecy.

Loodell
Loodell
3 years ago
Reply to  Cai

Do you know that the Bible has been teaching this all along? But hey, we are wiser today, who believes in a 5000-year-old book that is supposed to have been given by GOD. By whom?

carl
carl
6 years ago

I had a Facebook account for many years but when I started to post news criticising the islam, muslim’s, from Creeping Sharia, Bare Naked Islam and from Pamela Geller my Facebook account started to get frozen, I went about a year getting kicked off and on, sending in complaints and Facebook telling me nothing was wrong until it became useless to even use my account. Then i has no purpose to use Facebook at all.

Vickie Armstrong
Vickie Armstrong
6 years ago

In addition to having my comments to some of your posts censored and taken down as spam, I also no longer seem to be getting American Thinkers’ posts in my Facebook Newsfeed. I used to see their posts on a daily basis, now, nothing. I have to go directly to their website to read their articles. Yes, the Facebook Police and their algorithms are violating the First Amendment by censoring what they deem “appropriate”.

R. Arandas
R. Arandas
6 years ago

But what if they indirectly enable extremism through inaction? For example, doing nothing to take down social media accounts spreading Islamist propaganda? Surely they can be brought to account for that?

Sing On
Sing On
6 years ago

Google is offshoring its technology work to India, similar to Microsoft. I suspect Facebook is considering the same. India, with its growing Muslim population (Pakistan was carved out of India so Indian Muslims could rule themselves) and its arranged marriages, honour killings and gang rapes, would probably influence Google and Facebook in that direction due to employees there growing up in a culture very similar to Sharia law. You can thank Microsoft for starting the offshoring movement. Soon all former US technology companies will become Indian companies.

Sharon Boozer
Sharon Boozer
6 years ago

How can we (individuals and organizations) ban together to sue FB, disqus and others who ban truth comments exposing the truth of islam? I’m one of many that the muslims who work for them block when they don’t like a comment….even simply quoting the islamic writings will get you blocked…insane! They must be stopped for denying 1st amendment rights.

Loodell
Loodell
3 years ago
Reply to  Sharon Boozer

We have been duped and fed as sheeple, while the powers that be continue their destruction of Christianity, societies of all persuasions, family ties, and freedoms as humanity’s God-given basic rights.

James
James
6 years ago

I too grew up in the 70’s and I can also categorically state that where I grew up there was far more freedom of speech than now, less crime and most importantly the news was a lot more trustworthy. We are led to believe we have advanced and evolved. What has advanced is the way information is propagated due to the internet. Its easy and costs nothing. Due to this we are flooded with subjective biased news that has no credibility. To explain this better, think of a simple camera. Years ago a photographer had to be mindful of each shot. In other words take 20 well thought out shots and most would be usable. Nowadays you take hundreds and only use what we want to. The media is the same – each story had to count as it used precious white space. Nowadays a story is not worth a pinch of salt. Press the enter button and its published at no cost. Content has become less important – tomorrow is another day and we write something else….shit happens. Anyone can now now publish information albeit biased or highly subjective. Quality and accuracy is out the door. A case in point is the recent articles about time travellers coming back to warn us about climate change. These are written as if fact. Some feel a sense of gratitude to these note-worthy warriors, or the saviours of man-kind, who have gone through much personal discomfort to bring back such an important message. What we dont realise is that we are being fed a lot of garbage.

Sing On
Sing On
6 years ago

The issue is more complex than can fit into one article.
First the education systems of the us and Canada have been overrun by alt-left teachers with an agenda: to take full advantage of the subjective phrase “liberal education “.
Secondly technology companies have been busy offshoring their core workforce to India, a country with the largest Muslim population. They are only “American ” companies because they filed incorporation papers in the us that list their head office addresses as within the us.
Thirdly the Muslim immigrants to the west are a tight knit group with an agenda. Just talk to them: one Indian from Pakistan assured me that if we cooperated with terrorists they would not hurt us. And we worked for EMC at the time.
So we need to revamp our education system, stop offshoring of technology work and vote regularly.

Loodell
Loodell
3 years ago
Reply to  Sing On

The issue has been recorded in Scripture, but the Christian USA is speaking like a dragon. Unadulterated Scripture has been put aside, while dragon tactics are promoted and accepted.

zari apps
zari apps
5 years ago

Having never had facebook, twitter, instagram or similar, is really like a warm blanket in a cold winter. My advice is to leave all those criminals and take back what is yours, your life. You may have to sign petitions and knock lots of doors though.

Loodell
Loodell
3 years ago
Reply to  zari apps

One cannot truly unsubscribe from these unsocial medias. Their purpose of collecting data from terrorists has always been intended to cover all citizens of the world.
The agenda is against Christianity by the church and state power of the fake christian religion of the harlot and her daughters.

dspencer1969
dspencer1969
5 years ago

MeWe is much more open and honest social media platform than Facebook, I’m transitioning off of FB because I do not like my data being sold to advertisers or being told what I can or can not say and think. Maybe some of y’all could give the site a look over-there’s not much censorship and nobody selling your information.

Loodell
Loodell
3 years ago

The same combination of diabolical and human dark powers of spiritual wickedness in high places that is driving Islam, is driving anti-Islam.
The citizens of this world divided into two camps are being played out against each other as sheeple.
The educated, the wise, the unlearned, the ignorant, the religious, the believer, the unbeliever all are deceived into choosing one of the two camps.
THE BATTLE IS SPIRITUAL, has always been. And especially since the last century, the love for this power by the sheeple has grown.

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