Quote:
Originally Posted by wet work
I wonder how many conservatives were pitching a fit when a conservative senator was trying to run howardstern off the air via the fcc back in the day Surely it must've bothered them when trump hired the same guy to be his roving religious ambassador spreading those same kinda religious values around the whole world
Trump promised a hefty regulation of social media companies in 2017, and there was not much conservative flinching. In that context, it is a little amusing that conservative politicians suddenly object to an unregulated act of a private company.
Of course, conservatism has never been a champion of free speech. Rather the opposite, it has been a clamp around the foot of free speech since the birth of the modern liberal democracy. Morals, common decency, patriotism and national security have been the prime excuses. In the 70s they co-opted the rhetoric of classical liberalism, but not really its ideals.
But it isn't really about censorship. It's about the narrative that conservatism is a victim. Despite conservative politicians having used influencer tactics in politics for a long time and hold a ton more punching power online than their counterparts, they need to continuously hold the narrative that they are being held down. Conservatism is literally a dying movement, losing adherents to old age faster than it recruits younger people, engagement is the tool they have. Creating fear of an enemy and make themselves and their voters out to be victims is a good way to do that.
We know from surveys of conservative voters in the US that they believe they are being unfairly censored. Yet data analysis show us that conservative politicians dominate social media. And even more ironic, we know from surveys that the majority of conservative voters favor media censorship.
Parler lost their service provider because a bunch of goons killed people and planned to kill more, yet Parler did not moderate it. They didn't lose it because conservative politicians occasionally copied and pasted their Tweets onto the site.