i've always enjoyed reading fred and this one is certainly a timely and appropriate subject;

How much does [Big Tech censorship] differ from censorship in, say, China? Answer: In China people know they are watched. There is nothing subtle about it. How many Americans are really aware of the foregoing?

BY FRED REED

When a government does not itself impose censorship people may think they have freedom of speech, or can be made to think they do, even though they don’t. In America, the government does not need to, uh, “redact.“ Private entities—credit card companies, social media, search engines and so on—do for government what it cannot do openly for itself: Prevent expression of inappropriate thought.

Many believe that the First Amendment guarantees this freedom, if they have heard of the First Amendment. But the Amendment does not apply to private companies. It doesn’t have to. The huge corporations, not just the social media but financial services and mainstream outlets, can censor, directly or indirectly, as they like. “As they like” invariably means “as the formal government,” of which they are in effect branches, like.

Herewith some examples. For quite a while this column was homeported at the Unz Review. The site has now been heavily censored. Recently I asked Ron Unz, the owner, what happened. His response:

Sure, Fred.  Basically, we were banned from Facebook (i.e. nothing
containing unz.com can appear there or even be sent in private
messages).  More importantly, all our pages were “deranked” from every
Google search, meaning they’re now absolutely at the bottom of all
search results…Not only was our rudimentary Facebook page eliminated, but all subsequent attempts to  post our articles to the world’s largest social network produced an error message describing the content as “abusive.” Our entire website had been banned.

The Review is not calculated to make friends with everybody, among other things being obsessively and, I would say imaginatively, hostile to Jews, but this is hardly uncommon, and the site has never advocated violence, implicitly or otherwise,  against anyone. The whole idea of freedom of the press was to protect expression of ideas regardless of who liked them.

Then there is American Renaissance, a white advocacy site that urges no crime, (again) explicitly or implicitly. Follow the link and see for yourself if so inclined. It talks about such things as black crime, unrestricted immigration, and argues that affirmative action lowers standards. You may not agree with all of its ideas—I don’t—or any of them. But they are mainstream ideas held by tens of millions and deal with political questions of large importance.

I asked Jared Taylor, the webmaster and a graduate of Yale in philosophy with additionally a diplôme in international relations from l’institut d’études politiques de Paris about censorship of the site and of himself. His response:........more........