So...uh...why haven't we heard from those guys?
Which guys?
Didn't you read the title to this post? The same folks who assured us that "free speech" wasn't under attack because private companies, not the government†, were censoring conservatives. That everything these tech companies did to narrow the range of "acceptable" conversation was totally wonderful and acceptable.
† They were wrong, by the way. Free speech isn't just the government throwing you in jail for speaking, though by the way they're totally doing that now. Instead, free speech or more generally freedom of expression, is a cultural standard that involves all people understanding that barring extremely narrow restrictions everybody should be able to say whatever they like, and that media should be designed to facilitate this: both sides of every issue (or, dare we say, both traditional sides and the third edge of the sword...) need to be given the opportunity to make their case, no matter if one side wants to call it "hate speech" or "harmful white supremacy" or some such garbage. You still have to let the "hateful white supremacist" make his case...you never know, he might just be right about it and persuade you!
Those "Facebook can ban any groups they like", "Twitter can remove any users for trivial offenses they like", "Apple can remove any app from their store they like" people. For some reason, over the past week they all seem to have vanished off the face of the earth.
I'm sure at this point you know what I'm talking about: the curious "GameStop Revolution" or whatever term we're using to describe it. Zero Hedge has been on the case basically since the beginning.
It's hardly the point of this post to rehash the whole affair, but the developments during the past few days are what caught my eye. It started with Discord banning the group responsible for driving up GameStop and other stocks. Then RobinHood, the stock trading app popular with millennials (apparently), banned trading on any stocks involved in the discussions on the Reddit page (which, strangely enough, has yet to be banned, despite Reddit being pretty heavy-handed themselves).
This got the ire up of a many prominent conservative activists, perhaps recognizing the continued Big Tech trend of deciding anything against what the people in power [note that as Trump could tell you this isn't the same as the people in office! -ed] want is "hateful" and needs to be banned. Statements denouncing RobinHood's bans have been issued by a veritable "who's who" of the modern conservative commentariat including Donald Trump Jr., Tim Pool, Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich, Scott Adams, Dave Portnoy, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Wait, hold on, are we sure about that last one?
Yes, the irrational bitch is also upset about this (not rationally upset, of course, she thinks Ted Cruz tried to put a bullet in her brain).
Again though, when this was a different company taking (almost certainly legal) actions against her opponents, she was dead silent. Notice we never saw this tweet:This is unacceptable.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 28, 2021
We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit.
As a member of the Financial Services Cmte, I’d support a hearing if necessary. https://t.co/4Qyrolgzyt
So what's different this time? After all, leftists can't even make their typical false claims that conservative speech is against human rights or something. In fact, the people that Sandy Cortez is trying to protect are apparently white supremacists, according to CNN and Mother Jones. If the mainstream media says somebody's a white supremacist, then everybody who gives them a platform or defends them is also a white supremacist. Isn't that how this goes? Who knew that the difference between Paul From and AOC was a haircut.
Surprise surprise, there's a double standard at work. It seems to be the typical millennial "this thing I wanted has horrible unintended consequences that impact me now, so I want an exemption that only gets me out of this horrible thing I wanted" mindset at play (last seen when the "gig economy" was killed by the woke politicos who wanted to protect people from "predatory capitalism").
There's really no difference, of course, between RobinHood banning certain stocks from being bought (or sold, or both, or only one and not the other) and Twitter banning certain views from being expressed. On a strict technical level they are (probably) legally allowed to do so. The issue is that both courses of action are unfair, improper, ultimately detrimental, and immoral.
Morality, of course, isn't high on Big Tech's list of qualities. They start a platform and tell everybody you can "be yourself" and "express yourself" and "publish what you want to publish" and suddenly the bounds of discourse are narrowed based entirely on criteria they have decided are important. They start another platform and say you can invest where you want how you want to and then as soon as the big players make a stink they suddenly decide you are investing in the "wrong" stocks. In all of these cases their criteria aren't based on facts or reality, but rather on their own twisted and immoral worldview.
With the RobinHood/Reddit/GameStop saga, it's finally hitting AOC's fanbase. Which is why she now thinks it's wrong while the other purges that conservatives also opposed were considered wonderful.
