Liberals are Pressuring Facebook & Twitter to Silence Conservative Alternative Media

Despite the federal Liberals not actually getting Bill C-10 and C-36 passed through the House of Commons and Senate this past parliamentary session, the message is clear to Big Tech platforms; start throttling alternative media or face increasingly heavy regulations.

Although Canadians on the right are correct that Big Tech has never been shy in the past when it comes to censoring people using their platforms, sites like Twitter and Facebook in many ways have been pushed further down the road of censorship and discrimination by federal politicians in the United States and Canada accusing them of promoting wrong-think.

Currently in the United States President Joe Biden took aim at Facebook saying that “[Facebook is] killing people,” accusing Facebook of wrongdoing for not censoring alternative media coverage on COVID-19, which Biden called “outrageous misinformation”. 

Of course there is misinformation being posted on Twitter and Facebook but Biden isn’t upset about the clearly fraudulent conspiracy theory websites posting likes on social media the vast majority of people tend to avoid, instead, Biden clearly wants credible conservative alternative media throttled because it offers reasonable alternative narratives and information which he happens to politically disagree with. 

In Canada, the censorship signaling to Big Tech is even worse. Recently Heritage Minister Stephen Guilbeault said that online speech “undermine Canada’s social cohesion or democracy,” which translated out of bureaucratic-speak means he is upset that free expression online hurts the Liberals’ electoral chances. 

Big Tech already has a left-wing bias and censors conservative voices on their platforms, but they still want to avoid regulation to stay as independent as possible. When Minister Guilbeault implies that platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are hurting Canadian democracy, while the Liberals are at the same time pushing out censorship Bills like C-10 and C-36, the message is clear to Big Tech that they should preemptively crackdown harder on content that contradicts Liberal government narratives if they want to prevent the government from further regulating them.

Going towards an election the message is clear to Big Tech on what sort of content the Liberals want less of when they are running to gain their majority back.

If Big Tech does not preemptively grant all the wishes of the Liberal government then the one-two punch C-10 and C-36 will in theory force them to do it once passed, unless successfully challenged in federal court, which seems unlikely from the Big Tech companies. 

C-10 effectively will start to shift more content on social media and search engines towards Canadian government-funded legacy media like the CBC, CTV, and the Toronto Star, and C-36 (the online “hate speech” bill) will be weaponized against alternative media on the political right that continues successfully competing with Big Tech.

The anonymity that is granted by C-36 to those who make complaints about online “hate speech” enables the same people to legally harass their political enemies, making it possible for a singular left-wing radical to tie up dozens of conservative journalists in court for years at a time.