The past few weeks have seen another round of purging, by online platform or financial service providers, of content creators who rely on the internet for a living. The reasons for doing so are varied but usually default to some kind of transgression of their terms and conditions of use. However these Ts and Cs tend to be vaguely worded and appear to be selectively enforced, leading to fears that these decisions have been driven as much by subjective ideology as any exceptional misbehaviour on the part of creators.
If there is an ideological bias it would appear to be against those commentators that are advocates of freedom of speech and unfettered dialogue. On the other side of the fence you have those who are concerned with concepts such as 'hate speech', which seek to ensure nothing that is deemed 'offensive' should be tolerated in the public domain.
Comment: What is so devious about the mass banning from social media platforms of undesirable content is its seeming complete lack of consistency. The only thing in common for most of the people being banned (who come from both sides of the political spectrum) is ability to cause moral outrage. But moral outrage is subjective, so how on earth can someone stay on the right side of the terms of service for these platforms when the interpretation of those rules seems to change daily? Better to have a truly free speech mandate and let the chips fall where they may. But then, we all saw what happened to Gab.ai.
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