Brad Parscale, Donald Trump's 2020 campaign manager, and Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, have written a letter calling for the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter to address concerns over conservative censorship, as well as a call for transparency.
The letter comes one day after a judge ruled that President Trump is not allowed to block Twitter users - deeming the platform a public forum, and that "the White House acts unlawfully when it excludes people from this forum."
Will Twitter and Facebook be required to provide protections for conservatives whose voices are being muted? Parscale and McDaniel are pushing for that, calling out the Silicon Valley giants for censorship.
"We recognize that Facebook and Twitter operate in liberal corporate cultures," the letter reads. "However, rampant political bias is inappropriate for a widely used public forum."
We won’t tolerate bias toward conservatives or @realDonaldTrump supporters. We’re standing up for you and demanding answers. @GOPChairwoman and I have sent the following letter to @facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and @Twitter’s @jack Dorsey. #StopTheBias pic.twitter.com/Poz0Dne9i7
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) May 24, 2018
“Yeah. Maybe. But if @realDonaldTrump leaves @Twitter for another platform Twitter is done. Put a fork in it. 🍴”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Yeah. Maybe. But if <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a> leaves <a href="https://twitter.com/Twitter?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Twitter</a> for another platform Twitter is done. Put a fork in it. 🍴 <a href="https://t.co/u8QA3OKREA">https://t.co/u8QA3OKREA</a></p>— Brad Parscale (@parscale) <a href="https://twitter.com/parscale/status/1035368556874088448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 31, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In an interview with Fox News, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Trump 2020 Campaign Manager Brad Parscale reiterated their concerns over conservative censorship:
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McDaniel: "It’s a legitimate fear. Brad and I hear it all the time as we’re traveling the country. People are very concerned that conservative voices are going to be suppressed on social media. Of course, many of their users are conservatives and so Brad and I feel preemptively, we have to get out ahead of this, talk to Facebook, talk to Twitter, ask them for transparency, let us know what you’re going to do to make sure that every voice has a say on these social media platforms especially before this critical midterm."
Parscale: "Every day I receive thousands of messages saying, “I’m being shadow-banned.” And what we want to do in this letter is make sure that we understand what's happening. We want to ask them for transparency. I think the public deserves that transparency and we need to know that conservative voices have a chance to get their message out. This is a big problem."
Letter below:
Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook Headquarters
1 Hacker Way
Menlo Park, CA 94025
Jack Dorsey
Twitter, Inc.
1355 Market St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Dorsey,
We are writing on behalf of the Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign to request information about efforts by Facebook and Twitter to prevent political bias on the social media platforms.
Concerns have been raised in recent years about the suppression of conservative speech on Facebook and Twitter, including censorship of conservative news stories from news feeds and “trending” news sections. We are alarmed by numerous allegations that Facebook has blocked content from conservative journalists and groups, and Twitter has hidden such content from conservative users’ followers.
In 2016, former Facebook workers reported that they manipulated the “trending” section to exclude news tailored to conservative users, despite those topics trending on their own. A former trending news curator admitted in an interview that nearly all members of the trending news teams identified as liberal – and had the authority to approve topics. Moreover, some Facebook employees in 2016 reportedly pushed to ban then-candidate Donald Trump’s Facebook posts and label them as hate speech.
During congressional testimony, Facebook apologized for suppression of content from conservative bloggers and personalities, notably “Diamond & Silk,” entertainers who were deemed “unsafe to the community” for no reason. In response to these revelations, Facebook said it will use a new system that ranks news organizations by the level of user trust, promoting the highly scored outlets on users’ news feeds while suppressing those with lower scores. We are concerned about potential misuse of this system.
Meanwhile, conservative Twitter users have accused the company of unfairly targeting them, purging thousands of their followers in an attempt to stem “fake news” content, and unnecessarily prompting them to confirm their identity. Twitter claims its tools are free from political bias, but has allegedly targeted predominantly Republicans as part of a “shadow banning” practice, which covertly limits those accounts’ visibility on the platform.
We recognize that Facebook and Twitter operate in liberal corporate cultures. However, rampant political bias is inappropriate for a widely used public forum. What’s more, the consequences to our democratic society are profound. This is why special attention is necessary to address issues such as Facebook’s use of liberal organizations to fact-check content, the access to user profiles it gives to some employees, and Twitter’s manipulation of content that appears for the site’s users.
It has also come to our attention that Facebook is working with a third party to encourage voter registration. Though we agree that this is an admirable task, in theory, we ask for transparency over how Facebook determines who sees these advertisements in their news feeds. This is to make sure that the new feature does not become essentially an in-kind contribution to liberal candidates.
Since Facebook and Twitter are platforms used widely by the majority of voters, we request an explanation about how you will ensure all content is managed equally and fairly. How will you safeguard voters’ access to fair content on your platform? How will you guarantee that conservative voices are no longer censored, and conservative news no longer buried or otherwise hidden?
As you conduct reviews to assess bias against conservative content, we ask for your assurances that transparency, neutrality, and protection of all speech will be core tenets of Facebook and Twitter operations, now and in the future.
We ask for your response by June 18, 2018, and look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Ronna McDaniel
Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee
Brad Parscale
Campaign Manager for President Trump’s 2020 reelection
President Trump tweeted:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/StopTheBias?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#StopTheBias</a> <a href="https://t.co/xqz599iQZw">pic.twitter.com/xqz599iQZw</a></p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1034907478566359041?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 29, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Trump was sued by Alt-left Twitter users for blocking them. All they do is respond to his tweets with vulgarity. This isn’t a constructive debate.
In her ruling, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald wrote
“Turning to the merits of plaintiffs' First Amendment claim, we hold that the speech in which they seek to engage is protected by the First Amendment and that the President and Scavino exert governmental control over certain aspects of the @realDonaldTrump account, including the interactive space of the tweets sent from the account.”
“That interactive space is susceptible to analysis under the Supreme Court's forum doctrines, and is properly characterized as a designated public forum.”
“The viewpoint-based exclusion of the individual plaintiffs from that designated public forum is prescribed by the First Amendment and cannot be justified by the President's personal First Amendment interests.”
Trump is using his personal account. They are not blocked from the @potus account. Prior to Twitter, you received the news from the television and radio news outlets. Why do individuals have the “right” to Trump’s personal account? Is Twitter public or private? The argument from the left is that they will not have the opportunity to see/ hear what’s happening from the White House. They can watch, listen or read their favorite #fakenews outlets. They just want to be able to berate him and threaten him with no consequences.
If Twitter is public then it needs to be public for all, including conservatives who are throttled to a point of non-existence. You can view any tweet from Trump and all the top tweets are vulgar. Twitter and the left will argue that it’s because no one likes Trump. This is a blatant lie! Our tweets are de-attached to Trump’s tweet so they aren’t noticed in the thread. They become a single tweet that you can’t follow the thread on. This is complete hypocrisy and censorship on conservatives!
If Trump leaves Twitter, I’m right behind him. Who will follow Trump to the next platform?
Related Sources:
https://sc.cnbcfm.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/editorialfiles/2018/05/23/Microsoft%20Word%20-%202018.05.pdf; https://truepundit.com/trump-campaign-manager-if-trump-leaves-twitter-for-alt-platform-twitter-is-done/
<b>By: Lexy </b>
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Excellent article Lexy. - If he were to leave, Twitter would become nonexistent. Many are just like myself, only on Twitter to follow President Trump.
Thanks Lexy. I don't understand how a judge can do such crap.
It doesn’t matter how many CEO’s they call in from twitter and Facebook, they are just going to lie. I’ve been waiting for someone to start a social media outlet for conservatives.
Social media CEO’s are liars. They will say they do not target Conservatives, we all know better. I would love it if someone made a usable social media platform. Someday maybe.
I wish President Trump and his guys would start their own platform and call it Q+. It would put the rest of them out of business like they deserve! I'll follow our President to any platform he choses! WWG1WGA!
Switch to Gab.ai
They don't censor anything, and it's getting more popular.
Why write letters to the piece of shit owners of these companies? Just stop using them and whoring out your information for the privilege of a shitty censored platform. See jackass & suckerdick just hate that conservative views are popular and don’t want their babies to help spread conservative voices. So let’s help them kill off their babies! If they shadowban you that should be enough to pull the plug. Help them help themselves by deleting those spyware data mining apps called twatter and fagbook!