Will Ali Alexander Be at the Social Media Summit 2019

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused tech companies and social media platforms of censorship and bias confronting conservatives, taking the age-one-time approach of "working the refs" to a new level. And on Thursday, July eleven, the White House will play host to a number of correct-wing figures and bourgeois groups at a "social media top" featuring what White House spokesperson Judd Deere says will be "a robust conversation on the opportunities and challenges of today'southward online environment."

Right-fly media actually started amping up complaints at social media companies following the publication of a thinly-sourced 2016 Gizmodo story accusing Facebook of suppressing right-wing news. Two curators made the accusation, merely others could not corroborate those claimed. Soon thereafter, Facebook replaced its editors with an algorithm and things snowballed from there. In the past few years we've seen repeated imitation allegations, and numerous attempts at victimhood. At one point, Republicans fifty-fifty called electric current Fox Nation hosts Diamond and Silk to bear witness before Congress.

Trump has long accused the printing of having an anti-bourgeois bias, only it wasn't until a July 2018 Vice story accused Twitter of "shadow banning" conservatives based on a misinterpretation of the actual term that he expanded his victimization narrative to include tech companies. Since and then, he'south written well over a dozen tweets about supposed anti-conservative bias from tech platforms, and Trump said final calendar month that companies similar Google and Twitter "should exist sued considering what's happening with the bias." In May, his administration launched a "Tech Bias Story Sharing Tool" that asked followers to share stories of supposed censorship (while also collecting email addresses, ZIP codes, and telephone numbers of participants). Thursday's summit is, according to Deere, a direct response to the tool.

Trump's social media pinnacle is shaping up to be a stunt for right-wing commentators and memesmiths to continue working the refs by pushing the artificial "bias" narrative.

Trump's White Firm extended invitations to the summit to a number of similar-minded correct-wing figures and organizations, some of which have pushed the baseless tech bias narrative in statements that do not stand up to scrutiny.

Will Chamberlain

Human Events publisher Will Chamberlain has argued that access to social media platforms is a civil right, going so far every bit to compare struggles faced past conservatives who violate agreed-upon social media policies to those experienced by Black people in the 1950s United states of america. While Chamberlain concedes that the law doesn't currently treat the ability to post on Twitter as a civil right, he thinks that it should. Chamberlain's "civil correct" argument fails to mention that posting hateful content that violates platforms rules isn't an immutable feature like race, and information technology as well ignores the reality that access to platforms is obstructed but after engaging in violating behaviors, something users tin can avert.

Chamberlain's mail came on the heels of Facebook'due south determination to purge its platforms of the accounts of extremist figures -- the majority of them on the far-right -- due to repeated policy violations. On Twitter, where Chamberlain has an account that reaches over 48,000 followers, he'south made this argument ad nauseum.

During an interview with Tim Pool (a YouTuber who has a soft spot for "alt-correct" figures and will also exist attention the summit), titled "Republicans Face EXTINCTION Unless They Stop Online Censorship, Here'southward How They Can Fight Back," Chamberlain revealed that his argument has more to do with winning elections and power than with inalienable rights:

WILL CHAMBERLAIN: It will go untenable for conservatives to win national elections and and increasingly the bourgeois motion will become a regional party. The power of social media is both to both hijack the media's hive heed, and also to provide a space where conservatives can essentially pb on idea and motivate their voters to exit and vote. If the social media platforms constrain and constrict conservative voice communication and ban constructive persuaders and influencers on the correct, there's a huge boon to the left in terms of elections, so I don't see a way for Republicans to continue to win elections going forward if they let the left destroy them on social media

Tim Pool

Pool's YouTube channel is brindled with videos with titles such equally "Google Email LEAKED, Proves Conservative Censorship At Youtube," "Facebook Caught LYING About Censorship, Regulation Is Coming," and "Conservative Movie Unplanned Being Censored By Twitter?!" These videos dilate the persecution narratives pushed past conservatives, and they are frequently based on little more than than speculation or decontextualized anecdotes. Unsurprisingly, when someone he disagrees with has their Twitter account suspended for ane reason or some other, Pool's response is far from consistent with his free voice communication crusade.

For example, in Pool's video most the suspension of the account for the moving-picture show Unplanned, he amplified a conspiracy theory suggesting that Twitter was "trying really hard to restrict this information." Every bit information technology turns out, the Unplanned business relationship had been suspended because an account that linked to information technology had been suspended. This was an example of one the steps Twitter has taken to crack down on "ban evasion." As is oftentimes the case when accounts become temporarily suspended, information technology takes some time for the follower numbers to repopulate. In the case of Unplanned, seeing a massive dip in followers upon the account's restoration seemed like proof of an fifty-fifty larger conspiracy -- even though this wasn't the instance. Throughout the video, Pool suggests that these mistakes all seem to get in a single direction -- against conservatives -- citing equally an example the fourth dimension Trump'due south account was deleted on November ii, 2017, for eleven minutes. What Pool doesn't note is that the human being who accidentally deleted Trump'south account was reportedly an gentleman of the president, not a rogue #Resistance figure.

Pool has asserted that "Twitter, by definition, is a biased platform in favor of the left. Period." Every bit proof, Pool points to the fact that Twitter's harassment policy bans the misgendering of trans people. Never mind that Twitter bans all sorts of things -- for instance, only this week, the site expanded its hateful conduct policy as it relates to dehumanizing language used confronting people on the footing of religion. Regardless, Pool has pushed this 1 specific rule as an example of Twitter beingness biased against conservatives.

Charlie Kirk

Turning Point U.s.'s Charlie Kirk has been one of the loudest proponents of the "anti-conservative bias" narrative, a talking indicate he was already pushing during a September 22, 2016, appearance on Play tricks Business. "Conservatives are targeted, blocked, and silenced on social media. The left runs social networks with a political, leftist, agenda," he wrote in a tweet virtually the appearance. At the fourth dimension, Kirk had fewer than 75,000 Twitter followers; every bit of this writing, he has more than 1.sixteen million followers. This would propose that either tech'south attempts to "silence" conservatives on social media aren't very successful or that Kirk wasn't telling the truth (hint: it's the latter). Since and so, Kirk has continued to regularly spread hands debunked arguments and unsupported claims of censorship online.

For case, in a May 4 tweet, Kirk suggests a series of hypotheticals. His example, "What if an airline says you can't fly if you talk 'hate,'" seems to ignore that in that location are a number of reasons an airline may already prevent y'all from flying. For a long time, you used to be allowed to smoke indoors in many places, even airplanes. That's no longer the case. Smoking on planes is now prohibited to continue other users of the service safe, which isn't equivalent to banning those smokers who comply with the rules from flight. What'due south telling hither is that while Kirk opposes what he would likely consider discrimination on the footing of something someone chooses to do, similar the content they decide to mail, he is in favor of legalized discrimination against people for who they are -- at least when information technology comes to LGBTQ people.

Kirk often posts retweet-allurement designed to increment his engagement metrics while reinforcing his grievance narrative. Often, this takes the course of him saying that he receives "countless messages a 24-hour interval" from people who say they aren't seeing his social media posts

He as well occasionally posts outright misinformation that suits his calendar. For example, he was one of many conservatives to share a narrative about correct-wing media being suppressed past Google. In fact, the written report he cites doesn't say anything like that.

Carpe Donktum

The pro-Trump meme creator known every bit Carpe Donktum is known almost exclusively because of his wide reach on social media, making claims that at that place is an inherent anti-bourgeois bias a bit odd. He's cited suspensions of correct-wing figures like Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones, and Laura Loomer as show of anti-bourgeois bias and censorship. Each of those accounts were removed from their respective platforms for violating rules that they agreed to. Like-minded to a set up of terms, breaking the terms, and then claiming oppression when you get removed as a upshot isn't anti-conservative censorship.

He has argued that being kicked off of a social media platform for violating the rules is akin to being "unpersoned."

After popular pro-Trump subreddit "The_Donald" was quarantined by Reddit due to "threats of violence confronting police and public officials," Donktum claimed that there were no such threats and that this was all office of a plan by "Big TECH" to interfere with U.South. elections. In reality, posts on the subreddit about GOP legislators' potential team-upwardly with Oregon militia groups were littered with comments like "None of this gets fixed without people picking up rifles," "burn Portland and Eugene to the footing," and "No problems shooting a cop trying to strip rights from Citizens."

Brent Bozell

Media Research Heart founder Brent Bozell has loudly championed the narrative of tech bias, and he has been rewarded handsomely for information technology. Bozell has made frequent claims that social media platforms discriminate against conservatives, and that'south helped buy him a place of influence non afforded to anybody on the political left. In the fallout over a thinly sourced Gizmodo article posted in early 2016 claiming that Facebook's trending curators were somehow suppressing conservative news, Bozell managed to notice a spot along with more than a dozen other conservatives in a private coming together with Facebook CEO Marker Zuckerberg. Facebook has since bent over backwards to appease conservatives, playing right into Bozell's hands.

In a tweet, Bozell wrote that Google's public statements were contrary to "what they accept said to united states of america in private discussions," seemingly oblivious to the fact that his involvement in "private discussions" with Google ways that he'southward part of an elite group of people with extraordinary power. This undercuts his unabridged argument, but it shows just how effective working the refs can be.

When Google made slight adjustments to its YouTube search results to no longer privilege anti-ballgame misinformation and gory videos as often, Bozell flipped out and misrepresented the measure taken by the platform. Bozell too chooses to ignore the fact that anti-abortion content continues to dominate social media equally a whole.

Like many others on the right, Bozell was insistent that Twitter was "shadow banning" conservatives long after a problems -- which affected people across the political spectrum -- had been fixed. This was non true, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had addressed this rumor.

Ryan Fournier

Students for Trump co-founder Ryan Fournier will also be appearing at the event. Subsequently a number of extremist accounts were removed from Facebook and Instagram, Fournier used the opportunity to promote Parler, a conservative social media culling that hasn't quite taken off due to glitches. Similar others, Fournier glossed over the fact that these accounts were non removed simply for belongings conservative views, simply for engaging in actions that violated the terms all users concord to when signing up.

Ali Alexander (Akbar)

Ali Alexander (formerly known as Ali Akbar) is another correct-wing media personality invited to the White Business firm summit who is known for his large social media following and incendiary content, and he volition too attend the summit. Alexander was once briefly suspended from Twitter, seemingly for urging followers to buy ammo and guns in grooming for a coming civil war.

Subsequently Vocalization'south Carlos Maza (a former Media Matters employee) tweeted about his frustration over YouTube not enforcing its anti-bullying rules, Alexander called this a "queer form of censorship."

Despite having the ear of Twitter'due south Dorsey, who follows him on the site and has said that Alexander makes "interesting points," Alexander continues to insist that there is an anti-conservative bias at work on social media.

James O'Keefe

Summit attendee James O'Keefe of Project Veritas has fabricated a number of claims regarding social media censorship that but do not add up. Known for his sinister screw-ups and supposed exposés made upwardly of misleading and context-deficient video clips, O'Keefe has taken aim at social media platforms in contempo years.

In January 2018, O'Keefe published a series of videos claiming to evidence the beingness of political bias at Twitter by secretly filming Twitter employees who spoke in a personal capacity. His videos prompted conservative allegations of "shadow-banning" that were disproved past experts. Twitter also addressed the consequence and negated the claims, as reported by Gizmodo:

"The individuals depicted in these videos were speaking in a personal capacity and do not correspond or speak for Twitter," said a Twitter spokesperson by electronic mail, pointing me to a page that explains how and why Twitter accounts are censored or made less visible. "Twitter does not shadowban accounts. We do take deportment to downrank accounts that are abusive, and mark them appropriately so people can even so click through and see this information if they and then choose."

O'Keefe'south sting targeting YouTube was but as misleading equally his videos on Twitter, but information technology succeeded in fueling correct-wing claims of bias against conservatives later on the platform removed the video for "privacy violations." With the help of an "insider," O'Keefe has as well mischaracterized Pinterest'due south efforts to address abortion misinformation every bit an assail against Christians. O'Keefe has appear he'll use his appearance at the White House elevation to share stories with Trump from tech workers that ostensibly confirm conservative grievances of bias.

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