Reason Magazine Tries to Dunk on GOP Lawmaker, Steps On A Rake
Peter D'Abrosca
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Monday, a libertarian magazine published a story claiming that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) “doesn’t understand how Twitter works.”
“House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) accused Twitter last week of censoring content from Fox News host Laura Ingraham,” said Reason Magazine. “It turns out that McCarthy’s own account settings were to blame.”
“As multiple users pointed out, Twitter was not in fact censoring Ingraham. McCarthy simply had to change his settings to allow ‘sensitive content,'” Reason said.
Here is the Tweet:
Of course, McCarthy’s settings were to blame for the way the tweet was displayed, but Twitter was ultimately responsible for flagging the tweet as “sensitive content” in the first place, a small nuance that apparently escaped the esteemed academics at Reason.
Flagging any content as “sensitive” is a textbook form of censorship. It is a barrier between the creator of content and the consumer of content that directly obstructs freedom of expression.
The “libertarians” at Reason – supposedly proponents of absolute freedom – would rather support fascist corporate censorship in order to keep the federal government from regulating social media than actually supporting freedom of expression.
They either cannot, or simply refuse, to see the forest between the trees.
Reason also completely ignored the fact that Twitter has been caught several times admitting to censorship, particularly of conservative viewpoints.
Big League Politics reported Sunday:
A “nonbinary neurodivergent queer” (we’re going with he/him) Software Engineer at Twitter admitted on his personal account that he uses internal company mechanisms to try to censor “hate speech” that he finds personally offensive.
“Use in-app reporting mechanism, hear back ‘no violation’, escalate case internally,” he wrote in October.
The employee often expressed chagrin at what he views as a lack of regulation of speech on the app, and even called for the complete deplatforming of “Nazis,” which is leftist code for “anyone who disagrees with me:”
Big League Politics contributor Laura Loomer, who has 200,000 followers and is both Jewish and most certainly not a Nazi, was deverified in Twitter’s purge of blue check marks last November.
The Tweets are quite revealing. They provide a glimpse into how Twitter operates behind the scenes, showing that censorship is not just algorithmic, but part of the leftist culture at the company. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that Twitter “leans left” in an interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter Saturday.
Twitter employees have admitted on hidden camera that the company “shadow bans” those whom they feel have inappropriate views. Those people always seem to be politically right-of-center.
By comparison, leftist users of the micro-blogging site are allowed far more latitude. Sarah Jeong, for example, the virulently anti-white racist editor who was just hired by the New York Times, is allowed a platform without repercussions.
It looks like Reason is the party that is guilty of not “understanding how Twitter works.”
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