Here’s the Check

Once again, I am very glad God got me off of social media.

In case you don’t know, the social media tyrants are mounting a new initiative to censor “hate speech.” The obvious issue: who gets to define “hate speech,” and who holds them accountable? The answers: the social media tyrants, and no one.

The article I linked to says the point of the initiative is to “combat the use of social media by terrorists.” Comforting, right? Not really. This is the same excuse George Bush and Barack Obama used to erase the Fourth Amendment and destroy the privacy of every American citizen. It’s the reason your vehicle is tracked every time you drive in an American city or on a major highway.

Uncle Sam’s rationale seems to be this: you can’t limit government surveillance to terrorists unless you know who the terrorists are, and the only way to find out who the terrorists are is to direct government surveillance at everyone. Instead of netting the fish you want, you net everyone, scooping up their private information in wholesale fashion, and then you look at the information and other factors to decide who deserved the intrusion.

If you look at the article, you will see that the initiative was spurred partly by a lawsuit filed in France by a French group dedicated to protecting Jews from hate speech. They didn’t just complain about anti-Semitism, though. They complained about “homophobic” speech, as well as “racist” speech.

Who decides what “homophobic” means? Is it homophobic to say you believe what the Bible says about sodomy? Of course it is, as homophobia (a new word designed as a weapon) is now defined. Who decides what “racist” means? Is it racist to use the word “illegal” to describe aliens who are inside the US illegally?

The lawsuit was filed in France, but the social media tyrants operate all over the world. Are they going to have different standards in different countries? If I live in the US, will I be allowed to tweet, “Sodomy will ruin your relationship with God,” on a platform that will be seen in France?

It’s amazing how blind we are to Internet trends. We can’t see the obvious. We didn’t anticipate the corporate takeover of blogs. We didn’t see the liberal conquest of the Internet coming. Now we don’t see that social media sites are going to be used to destroy free speech.

Back when Myspace and Facebook were minor players, people blogged and used independent forums, or they avoided the web altogether. They advertised in the Yellow Pages and newspapers. They didn’t need social media.

Now, people who used to have their own independent Internet outlets are abandoning them for outlets that are controlled by small groups of godless leftist technocrats. And the worst thing about these outlets is that they have no accountability. They don’t charge, so they don’t owe us good service. They don’t work for the government, so they aren’t obligated to tolerate diverse opinions. They can throw you out or delete your writing whenever they feel like it, fairly or unfairly, and they wield their power very arbitrarily. Twitter seems to be the holdout, but they’re part of the new initiative.

It seemed like a great deal when we were given Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and the other outlets, free of charge. They let us advertise for nothing. They let us air our views without the need for hosting. People became addicted. There are companies and individuals that have integrated all this free stuff into their operations, to the degree that they might fail if they were expelled.

Think about that. Imagine what it would be like to wake up one day and learn that your company’s Facebook site, Youtube ads, and promotional tweets were gone forever, because you expressed your Biblical opinion about gay marriage. What if you also lost your LinkedIn and Google contacts? What would you do?

It’s going to happen. Don’t fool yourself. People who are financially dependent on these services are going to be faced with abrupt, bitter choices. Want to make payroll? Disavow the things you said in good conscience. Retract the things the Holy Spirit told you to say.

Most Christians will cave in, just like the Jews who rejected circumcision in Greek-occupied Israel.

If you have your own blog, and you don’t use social media to make money, you have a little freedom. It won’t last, but for now you can say what you like. There is no safe haven, but when a ship sinks, it’s a good idea to run to the part that sinks last.

I wonder when the ghost of Nuremberg is going to make its formal debut. Right now, it’s hiding in the wings, waiting for its cue, teasing us by exposing a foot or a hand. The stage has to be set. Pretty soon it will leap out in all its glory, and we’ll see how leftists and God-haters really feel about mercy and tolerance.

The devil suffers from fear of the truth, also known by the recently coined term “alethophobia.” The truth is that his ideas destroy people. The more power he has over communication, the better he can hide the truth. He coats his poison with candy, and he doesn’t want anyone to pull back the curtain and show him at work. Always the angel of light, with God always the punisher and mad dictator. Control of the Internet will be a huge coup for the supernatural propaganda machine.

The people who run our world used to go after people who were building bombs and amassing weapons. Now they’re starting to go after people simply for disagreeing with them.

It’s a wonderful end-run around the First Amendment. Entities that aren’t part of the government aren’t barred from restricting speech, and the Internet oligarchs aren’t part of the government. Not officially, even though Mark Zuckerberg visits the White House so often he probably has his own dresser drawer in the Lincoln bedroom. Now that a large percentage of public speech goes through social media, powerful, legal restrictions are possible.

I’m not going to worry about it (or about anything else), but people should be made aware. You have to have your prayer life together. You have to pick a side, because to refuse to pick a side is to pick the devil’s side. The one that loses.

It’s sad to see the great wealth and technological advances of the current age come with such a cost. Human beings find ways to ruin everything.