Once upon a time the internet was a freewheeling place where anything went.
These days the internet is more tightly centralized and regulated than ever. And no social media platform is more significant when it comes to political messaging and yet more tightly censored by the left than Twitter.
So this sort of thing was bound to happen.
Twitter has blocked a campaign ad by Republican Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn — a current representative from Tennessee — asserting that it contained an “inflammatory statement” about abortion that could no longer be promoted on the site. In the ad, Blackburn states that, during her time in Congress, she “fought Planned Parenthood, and we stopped the sale of baby body parts,” referencing her role as chair of the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives.
This doesn't quite rise to the full level of censorship that ordinary conseratives experience on Twitter. But it's getting up there.
Various forms of demonetization and ad denials are being used as an interim step before total censorship. And with the push on to fight President Trump's presence on Twitter, it's only a matter of time until Twitter bites the bullet and moves on to bigger game.
What happens when a Trump ad mentions that he kept illegal alien rapists out of America? That's rather inflammatory. (Obviously inflammatory remarks by Black Lives Matter, Linda Sarsour and leftists in good standing are still okay.
Normally companies can do what they like. But the level of centralization by a handful of corporations is worrisome. And there will, as lefties like to say, have to be a common sense dialogue with some common sense solutions.