It is no longer any secret that the totality of mainstream social media is run by the social justice warrior (SJW) wing of the leftist collective that dominates Silicon Valley. Tim Pool famously exposed this bias in a conversation with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and attorney Vijaya Gadde on Joe Rogan’s podcast earlier this year, and Youtube’s new hate speech policy is at least equally rife with SJW rhetoric, leading to a ridiculous, unfollowable policy based on the subjective whim of the folks who run Youtube’s trust and safety team (it’s also self-contradictory; check out a video I made going through the whole policy here). Facebook has gone so far as to ban even mentioning Tommy Robinson, and Patreon gave Sargon of Akkad (real name: Carl Benjamin) the boot for using the N-word once (three times in a singular paragraph) on someone else’s podcast, on an entirely separate platform, which had been available publicly for years prior, and in the context of dumbing down a debate with a bunch of self-described Alt-Right Neo-Nazis – who had systematically harassed him – that their evil ideology was just that, and all while not violating Patreon’s terms of service.
What is bizarre is that these folks do not seem to understand that these are one-sided, ideological suppressions of free speech: active campaigns to silence those who espouse ideas so much as to the right of Karl Marx on the political spectrum. Tim Pool – who is decidedly not right-wing – pointed this out on Joe Rogan’s podcast to Vijaya Gadde’s face in a self-evidentiary manner , and Gadde simply did not even understand what a liberal bias is. The obvious conclusion anyone who actually values free speech would make is that the totality of policy on any social media site ought to be boiled down to one sentence: Any content which is violative of the law will be removed without notification. Not only does it cover their proverbial back-sides by making it clear that they are platforms and not publishers, it presents – in a clear, concise manner – an easily-followable delineation which incentivizes the maximal use of their platform: good for the user, good for the platform – especially when the bottom line gets calculated.
It is further self-evident that authority unrestrained will tend to maximize that authority’s discretionary powers inevitably to the point of tyranny. Fortunately – as all social media sites function in the private-sector – this authority is subject to the restraint of the free market. Otherwise – as this and the next generation move away from conventional forms of communication and towards internet-based platforms – fears of total control over speech in this country being reduced to the whims of a single, arbitrary ideology in an Orwellian manner (1984) would not only be justified, but already a practical reality.
Many have suggested ways to resolve this issue, and many have suggested that the “size” of mainstream social media outlets precludes this issue from being resolved without an intervention by the US government, especially in the form of a State-instituted breakup. It is unclear if declaring various social media outlets “publishers” rather than “platforms” is even within the authority of any member of the executive branch, and there does not seem to be a consensus in the legal world if any case claiming any of these sites as “publishers” rather than platforms would actually succeed in court. Further, any attempt to “break up” the mainstream sites would be arbitrary on its face and disturbingly authoritarian in nature. At the very least, we wouldn’t want Pelosi or – God forbid – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be able to apply that same authority towards a breakup of places we like – say, Amazon.com or the Wall Street Journal – so we shouldn’t grant that authority to figures we may like. In a best-case-scenario, all of the proposed “solutions” to this clamp-down on free speech originating in Silicon Valley would take years to manifest, and would just lead to another Silicon Valley-based SJW platform replacing them.
There is another way, however.
And in Donald Trump alone resides the power to put an end to this nonsense.
Donald Trump’s personal Twitter account (@realdonaldtrump) accounts for over 61 million followers, or just under a fifth of all Twitter users, and twelfth world-wide, and that doesn’t count the roughly 26 million followers on his @POTUS account.
His following has exploded on both accounts since roughly 2016 at a rate that has consistently well-exceeded the user rate on Twitter, remaining at healthy growth right up to today. It should also be noted that Twitter’s total user count has flattened over the last just over a year and – after years of losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually – only became profitable just one year ago. Twitter generates 86% of its revenue from advertisements, so, clearly, the site’s whole existence is click-based, meaning every time The Donald tweets anything the value of its advertisements sky-rocket. What these numbers don’t mention, however, is the total number of clicks his various accounts get, or the amount of attention his Twitter account gets from other media outlets (Facebook, televised media, Youtube, print news media, etc.), which seems to form the lifeblood of the whole of the world of news media in the United States.
Trump is the Michael Jordan of Twitter: his number of followers may not be #1 (though it’s almost exactly equal to every human being who voted for him in 2016, and the millennial base that dominates Twitter is decidedly left-wing), but, let’s be honest: Twitter dies without Trump. A world without Trump on Twitter is a world where the mainstream media (possibly Fox News included) loses its whole news cycle nearly every day. And let’s not kid ourselves about the relative profitability of Twitter as a brand coinciding perfectly with the growth of Trump’s following.
But Twitter would survive if the proverbial nail is not put in the proverbial coffin, and we haven’t gotten to how this would affect other platforms like Youtube or Facebook.
In comes Jordan Peterson to the rescue, recently announcing that his multi-faceted, one-stop-shop platform is effectively in beta. Peterson claims that the platform will take an extremely free speech approach (calling it “anti-censorship”), which is in line with his abhorrence for how the mainstream platforms have taken the opposite approach.
So, here is my proposal: Donald Trump should put out a single tweet to read as follows:
Dear social media: get on board with actual free speech or I leave. You’ll be able to follow me at [link to Peterson’s platform]. If you’re for free speech, drop out of the mainstream and join me. MAGA.
Yes, that all fits within Twitter’s new 280 character limit, and, yes, I threw in the obligatory “MAGA” because we can’t expect Trump to not use his Twitter account to troll half the country one last time.
If the mainstream social media platforms then don’t get their acts together and sign on for actual free speech, he should just leave. Forever. And join Jordan Peterson’s site. And we should all go with him: dump Facebook; dump Youtube; dump Twitter; dump Patreon; dump it all.
Some sites may survive, but the free market will make Peterson rich beyond his wildest dreams, and, for what it’s worth, he can have my money. It will also bury Twitter, and Youtube and Facebook would almost certainly lose their financial backing when smart investors (who are almost universally right-wing, or at least capitalists) dump their stakes in mainstream platforms and put their money where it will grow like a weed: with Peterson.
There is an obligatory Star Wars reference to be made here about Trump being our “only hope”, and – although I don’t see this prospect as being that grim, despite the fact he’s probably the only person with a following that big with the balls to do this – the message is clear, and it applies to all of us as much as it does The President:
Donald Trump.
Dump Twitter.
