In the last few weeks, there’s been quite a bit of news going on with the Presidential campaign (which I won’t talk about) and how the media covers it. Specifically, there’s been a LOT of people complaining that social media platforms are censoring honest criticism, and mostly on one side.
This of course is a problem if you live in the United States, where we (supposedly) have protection of free speech under the First Amendment. If you post something that someone doesn’t like- you could be censored, suspended, or in extreme cases, have your account terminated or even be personally attacked, without actually violating the site’s TOS.
With the recent craziness going on at Facebook and Twitter, defenders of free speech have been getting banned from the social media platforms, and are looking for alternatives (and they’re out there). The most recent I’d heard of is Gab.ai, which isn’t even in full production yet, but is already garnering a huge influx of users migrating from Twitter and Facebook because of its staunch “no-censorship” policy. Users are welcome to filter anything they don’t want to see for themselves, but they won’t be able to get other users censored for saying something they don’t like (illegal activity is still addressed, of course).
But from the looks of it, the Social Media giants are slowly showing cracks at the seams. Twitter’s stock is declining steadily after a failed attempt to sell the company, and Facebook’s insistence on becoming “all things to all people” is bordering on anti-trust territory.
You could almost say… they’re ready to croak.
Nevertheless, I am overjoyed there’s someone stepping up to fight for free speech. And with Gab.ai’s user count exploding, I can’t be the only one!
(Two year update: Gab’s “free speech” platform was quickly swarmed by trolls and turned into a complete cesspool, involving legal action, and all sorts of stupidity. So much for that…)