In 2017, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota stated that the rural (Republican) areas in Minnesota are “mostly rocks and cows.” In August of last year, he said that the Minnesota National Guard was made up of “19-year-olds who are cooks.”
Rural Minnesotans have a wry sense of humor. They took his statements as a badge of honor and created a Facebook group called “Rocks and Cows of the North and 19-year-old Cooks”. In a few weeks it grew to more than 42,000 members, filled with people who felt they weren’t being adequately represented by their government.
Having grown up in rural Minnesota myself, I was honored when they graciously allowed me to become a member. Well, that’s what I thought. It turns out that they didn’t discriminate at all. Anyone could join their group. The only real stipulation was that, while interacting with the group, you had to act like a Minnesotan and be nice.
Using Facebook, the members of the group were able to communicate with people they had never met but had similar interests and beliefs. As the election neared, the posts focused on getting people out to vote and the hope that President Trump would be reelected to a second term. And, of course, they complained about Governor Walz. If you were a Conservative, it was a pretty good place to share ideas with like-minded people.
Two days before the election, Facebook deleted their group. With the click of a button, 42,000 people were now unable to communicate with each other. 42,000 people lost the ability to freely exchange ideas at one of the most critical times in their lives.
Think this is an isolated incident? Think again.
A few weeks ago, a new Facebook group was created called “Joe Biden is NOT my President”. The group grew quickly and as of yesterday morning it had over 1.7 million members. As of yesterday afternoon, it had zero. Facebook had removed the group. It seems, however, that Facebook believes it’s OK to have a “Donald Trump is NOT my President”. That group has been allowed to exist on Facebook for four years. It’s still active on Facebook. But, having a similar sentiment about Joe Biden somehow breaks their site rules.
Both of these groups are back, but the Rocks and Cows group had to start over from scratch and doesn’t garner the reach it once had. The “Joe Biden is NOT my President” group appears to, so far, have it’s membership intact. How long that will last is anyone’s guess.
The First Amendment protects our right to peaceably assemble. We’re guaranteed the right to free speech. Except, apparently, on Facebook.
Actually, the First Amendment only protects speech from government censorship. Being censored by a private company is perfectly legal. A private media company, such as Facebook, can refuse to publish or broadcast opinions it disagrees with. In the examples above, Facebook took the drastic measure of deleting the entire group. But, a more subtle form of censorship is “fact-checking”. So is simply limiting who can see what you post. And they do that all the time.
Social media gets to decide what you can say and who you can say it to. When they do allow you to say something, they get to decide if what you say is “factual”. They flag what you say as “misleading” or “partly false” if they alone decide that it is so.
Facebook, and other social media companies can limit your ability to peaceably assemble. They can also prohibit your right to free speech. They can remove anything or anyone that disagrees with whatever beliefs are held by the employees of the company.
And it’s all perfectly legal.
So, not only does Big Tech decide what you can say, they decide what you can hear, and that influences what you think. Every single person in this country should be concerned about the virtually unlimited power wielded by Big Tech. Actually, “concerned” isn’t the right word. We should all be afraid.
Because today they’re hunting Rocks and Cows. Tomorrow it might be you.
