Big tech companies, like Twitter and Facebook, are receiving harsh consequences over permanently suspending President Trump’s social media accounts. Twitter’s stock price fell by 12% and erased $5 billion from its market capitalization after choosing to delete an account that had about 88 million followers. The stock dropped as low as $45.17 per share.
The stock fell after people saw the decision as one that was politically motivated and a way to silence a major conservative voice among the public. This also erodes interest in social media platforms that look to censor free speech. It had started earlier last year when Twitter began flagging some of President Trump’s tweets with a disclaimer calling his election fraud tweets “disputed.”
Candice Owens, along with other conservative voices, have taken action against the big tech companies and sued their ‘fact-checkers’ since permanently banning the President from Twitter. Owens claimed that it was time to fact-check the fact-checkers while claiming them to be activists for the left that shut down your speech if they don’t like it.
While some social media users look for new apps that are more friendly to free and conservative speech, Owens is fighting back against social media censorship and the big tech’s targets. One of the sites she is suing, ‘Lead Stories,’ is run by a former CNN employee and funded by ByteDance, a Beijing-based company that owns the TikTok spyware app. The company has been deemed a national security threat and compromise by China.
“Facebook then is paying for fact-checkers funded by an arm of the Communist Party of China to censor my content, here, in America. The Communist Party of China had more say over my content than the First Amendment. This is insanity. It’s un-American. It’s dangerous. And it needs to stop. This is why I am fighting,” Owens said.
People are starting to fight against a world where Twitter’s terms of services are more important than the terms in our Constitution and Bill of Rights regarding free speech. Others argue that if private companies such as Twitter can decide to do whatever they want and censor/publish the content they want, they should not receive Section 230 protection from Congress.
While Twitter’s stock prices continue to plummet, Facebook and Snapchat also declined more than 1% in overnight trading. Apple and Google have been working to remove all conservative-based free speech apps, such as Parler. The app stories claimed that the company does not do enough to address violent threats on its platform.
Big tech companies have never liked it when conservative voters tried to speak their mind or opinion – now it’s just all public.
