It’s another case where a prominent Republican has faced questionable treatment from a Big Tech company.
But it’s encouraging to see more and more push-back from leading conservatives.
And now Vivek Ramaswamy sounded the alarm on Big Tech corruption after he was targeted for censorship by one social media platform.
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy notified his followers on social media on Thursday morning that he learned that his LinkedIn account had been restricted.
He then reached out to the company and was told that it had been determined that he had posted three videos that contained what they deemed to be “misleading or inaccurate information.”
No opinions outside the radical Left’s are allowed
In a screenshot posted by Ramaswamy, the company attempted to point to specific quotes he made in the videos as justification for the restrictions.
The first quote that the company didn’t like was from a video posted in February which read, “The CCP is playing the Biden administration like a Chinese mandolin. China has weaponized the ‘woke pandemic’ to stay one step ahead of us. And it’s working.”
Another comment deemed objectionable was, “If the climate religion was really about climate change, then they’d be worried about, say, shifting oil production from the U.S. to places like Russia and China. Yet, the climate religion and its apostles in the ESG movement have a different objective.”
Finally, the third disfavored comment was, “The climate agenda is a lie: fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity.”
Ramaswamy called the actions “staggering.”
“But I’m not bringing this about because it’s about me,” Ramaswamy said. “I’m bringing this up because if they can do it to me, they can really do it to anybody for making statements about the climate change movement and agenda in this country that are grounded in fact and then express an opinion based on those facts.”
“To make a statement about Biden’s relationships with China and criticize his China policies as a result, to say that that’s gotta be characterized as ‘misinformation, hate speech, and violence,’ per LinkedIn’s terms of service – this is a Microsoft-owned company, so it shows what’s going on this country,” he continued.
He went on to take aim at the effective partnership between supposedly private corporations and the federal government to censor speech.
“These aren’t really the actions of private companies,” Ramaswamy added. “These are so-called privately held companies or publicly-traded private companies that are doing the work of the government though the back door, silencing speech that the government would never dare censor, could never censor under the Constitution… That’s even more dangerous than direct government censorship in many ways because it is a hybrid of corporate power and state power together, doing what neither one of them could do on their own. That’s really what this is about.”
Now that this is drawing attention, we were just kidding…
Several hours later, the company evidently backed down.
“The account was restricted in error and it’s now back up,” a LinkedIn spokesperson noted.
Calling the suspension “an error” strains credulity.
What’s far more likely is that the spotlight Republican Presidential candidate put on the company’s tactics was more trouble than it was worth.
Kudos to Vivek Ramaswamy for sticking to his guns, and clearly stating his position in support of free speech.
Here’s to hoping for more of the same from other political leaders.
US Political Daily will keep you updated on any developments to this ongoing story.
