Why Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Censor the Fifth Estate

The Fifth Estate is defined as:

A socio-cultural reference to groupings of outlier viewpoints in contemporary society, and is most associated with bloggers, journalists publishing in non-mainstream media outlets, and the social media or “social license.”

According to Wikipedia:

William Dutton has argued that the Fifth Estate is not simply the blogging community, nor an extension of the media, but ‘networked individuals’ enabled by the Internet, i.e. social media, in ways that can hold the other estates accountable.

Holding the “other estates” accountable

The other estates are the President of the United States, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. judiciary and the U.S. media. The Fifth Estate has now become a trusted agent to hold the other estates accountable.

The media used to be the Fourth (and last) Estate. With the growing distrust of the media, a new outlet was launched know as the Internet. The first “blog” was Links.net created by Justin Hall, a Swarthmore College student, in 1994. It was from this DNA the contemporary Fifth Estate was conceived. And grow it did!

Link.net gave rise to social media sites designed to provide friends the opportunity to share information with friends. This sharing began with the building of personal relationships, to the growth of like minded friends of a socio-cultural/ political nature. Today, every political party, social group and religious ideology are on social media. Social media is the equivalent of the old printing press but more powerful. It is more powerful because the friend to friend trust level is higher than the trust level between social media sites and the other estates.

Hence the threat of the Fifth Estate has grown exponentially.

The major social media sites (Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Pinerest) have realized that the growth of the Fifth Estate is a threat to them and their socio-cultural/political narrative. These bloggers, known as citizen journalists with traditional “outlier viewpoints”, are a direct threat to them and those socio-cultural causes that they support. Therefore, these social media sites, led by Facebook, are “shadow banning” certain view socio-cultural/political points using the rationale that they “violate their socio-cultural community standards” or are considered socio-cultural “hate speech.”

When did censorship of the Fifth Estate begin?

It is difficult to determine exactly when the social media sites decided to begin restricting the freedom of friends to share ideas with friends. Perhaps it began when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg joined forces to become watchdogs over actions of the privileged and powerful.

What is clear is that since the election of President Donald J. Trump the censorship on the Fifth Estate has increased dramatically.

Why is the Fifth Estate being censored?

Rod Thomson gives two simple reasons why the Fifth Estate is being censored.

• Government Knows Best. The instinct of liberals is that government is the best institution for solving societal woes. Not the family. Not the church. Not community organizations. Government. This, of course, is the antithesis of the thinking of the founders and framers of the nation, who saw the government as the single biggest threat to a society made up of individuals.

That’s why socialism is such a cozy fit for a progressive liberal: Benevolent government, run by the smartest among us, owning and distributing society’s wealth and making all the big decisions, is surely far better than selfish capitalists and ignorant masses making those decisions in chaos.

If you prefer central government decision-making over individual liberties — which is not the words, but most certainly the practice on the Left today — then of course you are hardly going to be in favor of uncontrolled speech by the masses.

• Liberal Ideas Don’t Win Arguments. This is going to trip some triggers — so perhaps a trigger warning is in order — but liberalism generally builds its belief structure on emotions, not on rational, data-driven, science-grounded arguments. This is why contradictions and inconsistencies are so common, and why liberals are so quick to resort to demonstrations and protests with signs and placards — those can capture emotional sentiments much better than reasoned arguments.

Censorship has become weaponized. The Fifth Estate is working to expose those who use censorship in a country where freedom of speech is held near and dear. Tyrants use censorship to silence their enemies. Those who use censorship are working to destroy our Constitutional Republican form of government. They don’t want to be held accountable.

RELATED ARTICLE: 2 Simple Reasons Why The American Left Instinctively Seeks Censorship

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