Liberal Double Think

The social media giants have stomped down in another massive censorship sweep, especially targeting Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Infowars host Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos and Laura Loomer, and Paul Joseph Watson, claiming that their ideas are hateful and they are personally "dangerous", (although dangerous to who and how, was not made clear).

This action, one of series of censoring and banning since the Democrats responded to the election of 2016 with loud cries of outrage, accusing Russia of giving information to the American people that the Democrats didn't want them to have, seems to be cheered on by those same "liberals", the kind that once donated to the ACLU, but now insists that the only way to have a True Democracy is to make sure that Americans are kept in the dark and fed nothing but bullshit.

Yes, it seems pretty clear that these are the same liberals who felt that freedom of expression was SO important (before the election) that a man who owned a small bakery (with competing bakeries available) should be forced to write a message on a cake that he didn't want to write. Because....freedom of speech.

And now these same liberals are sternly lecturing free speech advocates that private ownership of the means of information and opinion sharing trumps any concerns about censorship of said information and opinion sharing, because, all of a sudden, they are supremely subservient to the rights of capitalist ownership. "It's a private corporation and they can do whatever they want!" they insist.

And the fact that the platforms are now the main way that humans around the planet communicate with each other is also blithely blown off by the liberals, who tell you "If you don't like it, create your own platform". Yeah, that seems feasible. Just create your own platform that hosts 2,000,000,000 people, and then that platform can allow free speech. You can't expect to insist that the existing platforms remain as free and open as they were until 2016, that is unreasonable.

The fact that the owners don't produce or pay for the content they host, but act as facilitators, (like a phone company, which isn't allowed to listen to your conversations and then ban you from having a phone if they don't like what you say), is also irrelevant to the liberals, who seem to assume that their owners consider them Special People who will never be banned, so they don't really care about people whose opinions they don't like.

They don't understand the concept of the commons, or public utilities, or the idea that public space belongs to everyone, not just the favored few. This gives them a lot in common with traditional reactionaries, doesn't it? You know, the people they claim to hate and fear and support banning.
It is ironic that they want to censor those with which they have so much in common.