“The loss of their social media accounts will have a major impact on the ability of conservatives and right-wingers to organize its online supporters for the U.S. midterm elections and beyond.”
(Allum Bokhari – Breitbart) The purge of the right on social media was once a slow trickle, with high-profile bans happening only occasionally, and then subsiding. With just three months until the midterm elections, the Masters of the Universe in Silicon Valley have turned online censorship into a cascade.
Earlier this month, Alex Jones was blacklisted on virtually every major social media service, including Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, and even Pinterest and Linkedin. Following pressure from CNN and Media Matters, Twitter eventually followed suit with a week-long suspension.
A few days after the mass-purge of Jones’ accounts, Twitter permanently banned libertarian commentator Gavin McInnes, and the official accounts of his grassroots organization the Proud Boys, on bogus charges of “supporting violence.”
A few days later, Patreon, which has been ramping up its censorship of right-wingers (usually based on unsupported accusations of violence-promotion similar to those used by Twitter), kicked off Islam critic Robert Spencer, founder of Jihad Watch. It later emerged that Mastercard had pressured Patreon into making the call.