Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey (D) continued a specifically targeted assault on the Second Amendment in addressing two of the more prominent social networking platforms with a written correspondence in July. (Editor’s note- The third “trending” item mysteriously appeared in my news feed when writing this article.)
According to Colin Lecher of the Verge, the letter in direct response to the official January ban of firearms sales on one of the sites, specifically addressed concerns from the Markey as to the consistency and overall impact of enforcement policy. The response to the Senator’s inquiry from behind Mark Zuckerberg’s walled empire, was extremely disconcerting.
“We temporarily hide photos associated with potentially violating hashtags while our Community Operations team reviews them,” wrote a company official. “We remove reported photos if they violate any of our policies, including our prohibition on peer-to-peer firearm sales.”
Basically, the moderators from the on-line community are given free latitude to make a subjective decision in removing any content pertaining to firearms and weapons, even without the intent to buy or sell. The second part of the quote effectively illustrates this conclusion. Markey’s clear objective is to utilize the online firearms marketplace angle as a smokescreen in urging social networks to emphasize control in flagging and gradually increasing the ban on shared information pertaining to the Second Amendment. Why an official elected into office by citizens would take this tact is shocking, but not surprising considering the political leanings of his constituents.
In May, the unnamed company admitted to actively facilitating a political bias towards conservative content and minimizing visibility to end-users by deliberately altering software algorithms. This included specific limitations imposed for purchased on site advertising campaigns. The organization can claim misleading businesses practices and potential fraud to an already full plate topped off by anti-American sentiment. It is no wonder that the decline of users in the US has been on the downward trend over the last five years.
The moral of the story is that there is no free internet and the first two Amendments of our Constitution does not apply between “friends” or “frenemies”.
Read Colin Lecher’s full article here.
