Many of our supporters have responded to the current deplatforming trend by using Facebook and Twitter less and using their competitor platforms more. The Ontario libertarian party has created accounts on several upcoming social media platforms to meet this demand. Please follow us on this growing list of alternative social media networks:
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| Visit Us on MeWe | Visit Us on Minds | Visit Us on Gab |
Recently it made news that alternative social media app Parler was dropped from Apple and Google apps stores, and then shortly afterwards had its servers pulled by Amazon. Parler is suing Amazon for anti-competitive practices and states that they will be back online shorty. Facebook also blocked Ron Paul from his own page, apparently citing multiple community standards violations, shortly after he published an article criticising corporate censorship.
Freedom of speech laws apply to government, not private companies. Nobody should ever be forced to do business with someone they disagree with. But extensive government collusion with big tech companies have caused the lines to be blurred as to whether a big tech company can qualify as being considered privately owned; they clearly are not privately controlled.
Most big tech companies got to the positions of power they now occupy through collusion with government, not because they offer good products and services. The state offers lucrative contracts to big tech to supply information and services to fulfill the government's military and political control agendas. Big tech then caters to the whims of these political clients to retain those lucrative contracts. This collusion between the state and big business sets up what many consider to be a "failure of capitalism". But in the absence of this government collusion, such failures would not occur.
The libertarian political solution to the problem of big tech censorship is therefore to end this collusion between the state and tech companies. The Ontario Libertarian party would cut all corporate welfare and subsidies handed out to tech companies by the province, creating a level playing field for all competitors. We would also put an end to the regulation of Ontario media outlets and Internet companies. These political actions would restore competition and ensure that all tech companies are held accountable to market forces rather than political control. This would in turn make Ontario a better place to start a high tech business.
We can ban big tech from our own lives just as easily as they have banned the information they disagree with. There is a vast supply of information on the Internet that is compatible with our values and principles and people will not stop producing such information just because a few companies disagree with them. We can use competitor platforms more and big tech platforms less. We can cut out the social media sites and go straight to our favorite information sources directly, eliminating the possibility of an unscrupulous entity filtering the information we see. Censorship by private companies is largely a spook of the mind and something we can easily circumnavigate with little effort.
