On Friday, Facebook and Twitter launched an unprecedented attack on free speech and the right to freely assemble in today’s internet world when they deplatformed President Trump, his campaign, his inner circle of key supporters, and his most vocal supporters on the social media platforms.
Going a step beyond social media, a one of the Trump campaign’s principle email service providers, Campaign Monitor, deplatformed the Trump campaign as well, cutting of the President of the United States’ ability to directly email his supporters.
Several constitutional scholars, speaking confidentially so as not to get caught up in the draconian attack on American’s freedoms to speech and assembly, called into question how these platforms are not violating the President’s constitutional rights.
The Trump campaign typically send out approximately one email blast per day. From January 1 to January 6 the campaign executed 33 email campaigns. Yet, since Friday there hadn’t been an email sent out by the campaign for 48 hours, leading many to suspect other email platforms in use by the Trump team may have also deplatformed a sitting President.
There hasn't been any Trump emails for more than 48 hours. Almost unheard of — he sent 33 in the first six days of Jan; 2,500+ last year. (h/t @TrumpEmail)
At least one of the services the team used, @CampaignMonitor, has suspended Trump's access, the company confirmed.
— Dave Lee (@DaveLeeFT) January 9, 2021
In a statement that attempted to distance the company from the idea that they are trampling of the free speech of an American citizen and interfering with the lines of communication between over 71 million people and their President, Campaign Monitor intimated that the Trump campaign most likely other methods of sending emails to supporters.
“The self-service account associated with the Donald Trump Campaign has been suspended as of today, January 7th, 2021. Typically, political campaigns use multiple email service providers to send campaign, fundraising and other emails,” Campaign Monitor said in an official statement about the deplatforming. “Based on the low volume of emails that had been sent from the Campaign Monitor account, this is likely a very small portion of total email activity from the campaign.”
On Friday, Twitter made the unprecedented move of permanently banning thousands of Trump supporters and allies before inserting itself between a sitting President and his citizens.
Accounts that promoted the Stop the Steal rallies or supported challenging the questionable election results in the five problematic battleground states were also banned, as were myriad smaller accounts that supported the President.
The Great Purge – which some have compared to a cyber “Kristallnacht,” spread to Facebook and Google.
Twitter/Facebook closing conservative accts. Google shutting down Parler. @Apple threatening to do the same.
BigTech hates free speech. As we enter the Biden era, they stand ready/willing to be the left’s Chinese-style thought police.
As AG, I will fight them with all I’ve got.— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) January 9, 2021
Non-partisan free speech social platform Parler was removed from the Google App Store and given a 24-hour notice to put in place a draconian moderation policy or face being removed from the Apple Store.
Parler CEO John Matze responded by saying, “Apparently they believe Parler is responsible for all user generated content on Parler. By the same logic, Apple must be responsible for all actions taken by their phones. Every car bomb, every illegal cell phone conversation, every illegal crime committed on an iPhone, Apple must also be responsible for.”
Parler then had its contract with Amazon Web Hosting cancelled and will go dark until they can find a new hosting provider.
