OPINION: Social Media Purge Just the Beginning

My Parler account active for less than 48 hours.  I created it Saturday morning.  Sunday afternoon, conservative talk show host Mark Levin posted a note on the platform.  He suggested Parler would be back in action by noon Monday (I’m thinking East Coast time).  If you hadn’t heard, Parler lost its host server as part of a weekend long purge of social media.  The site is portrayed as inciting violence.  The few times I looked at the screen over the weekend all I saw were teases for TV shows hosted by Sharyl Attkisson and Levin. 

Meanwhile, by the middle of the weekend, a competing site called Gab or GAB had seen an increase in membership of almost 800 percent.  There are going to be some winners as well as losers as the purge continues.

The big winners are the oligopolies.  Facebook and Twitter are also squashing the smaller players.  I wasn’t necessarily looking for another platform.  I can’t balance the half-a-dozen I already use.  I’ve never been in Facebook Jail.  Twitter has never warned me about content.  I’ve seen connections vanish.  Sometimes for a few days or a month and wonder what they’ve done to incite the censors.

I’m a conservative.  I post links from several sources.  Almost as many from other viewpoints.  I figure reading the opinions of the other side has some value.  Even if the other side has no interest any longer in our thoughts.  Verifying content is also a good idea.  If I don’t know the source, I hesitate.  A few months ago the spouse of a state legislator posted an essay from a writer about China eating our economic lunch.  I looked up the author.  He’s a serial poster.  In a previous essay he blamed many of our current domestic woes on “satanic Jews”.  I’m sure the legislative spouse hadn’t looked far enough down the page.

As for the purge, even liberals are starting to warn it’s only going to make matters worse.  Click on this link and this link.

Oh, and I can't but wonder how much longer you'll be hearing conservative talk radio.  And last week a pair of Christian pastors told me they expect to be muffled from their pulpits.