Facebook, Google, Amazon Silent For Days After Twitter Drops SPLC
Author’s Comment: I have been personally attacked and labeled on the SPLC hate-watch list. My crime was supporting the Bundy Ranch Patriot Political Prisoners and their families during their unjustified incarceration while waiting for the trials that ultimately exonerated them. At one point I was also removed from Facebook for more than 2 months. It took the actions of an Attorney to have my account reinstated.
Twitter distanced itself from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) following reports suggesting that the group scams liberal donors out of money. Facebook has not yet revealed whether it plans on ending its partnership with the group.
Twitter appears to be one of the only big tech companies in Silicon Valley to completely divorce itself from the SPLC, an Alabama-based group that got slammed in March following reports it takes donors’ money while ignoring racial harassment. Facebook has not responded to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s repeated requests for comment about its affiliation with the SPLC.
“The SPLC is not a member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council or a partner the company has worked with recently,” a source within Twitter told TheDCNF on the condition of anonymity. The company listed the SPLC as a “safety partner” working to combat “hateful conduct and harassment,” according to a June 2018 DCNF report.
Twitter also included the Trust and Safety Council, which “provides input on our safety products, policies, and programs,” the company’s policy page noted at the time. Twitter’s page no longer includes SPLC as a member helping to govern certain types of conduct. Facebook’s involvement with the group was apparently more intimate.
The SPLC is on a list of “external experts and organizations” that Facebook works with “to inform our hate speech policies,” Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja told TheDCNF in June 2018. The company consults with outside organizations when developing changes to hate speech policies, he said at the time.
Budhraja declined to name all the outside groups working with Facebook but confirmed the SPLC’s participation. The SPLC accused Facebook in a May 2018 article of not doing enough to censor anti-Muslim hatred. That article did not disclose the SPLC’s working partnership with Facebook.
Amazon has not responded to TheDCNF’s repeated requests for comment after SPLC fired co-founder Morris Dees on March 13 over “inappropriate conduct.”
Google was also dinged in 2018 for using the SPLC to assist YouTube in policing content on its platform. The left-wing non-profit group is one of the more than 100 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and government agencies in YouTube’s “Trusted Flaggers” program, TheDCNF reported in June 2018. Google has also not yet responded to TheDCNF’s requests for information.
The group designated the Family Research Council a “hate group” in 2010 because of its occasional belligerent defense of traditional marriage. Media outlets often rely on the SPLC to craft stories.
CNN, for instance, published the group’s list of 900 hate groups in 2017 under the headline “Here Are All the Hate Groups Active in Your Area,” then was forced to modify the story after conservatives complained that the story effectively conflated conservatives with neo-Nazis. CNN maintains that the SPLC is one of the only groups that monitors hates groups.
Many times over the past few months we have shared articles regarding social media platforms’ violations of first amendment rights by way of shadowbanning or outright banning of pages they find to be “offensive” (read, “conservative”). One thing all of the social media giants have in common seems to be their preference for liberal and globalist policies, and now we have a report that PayPal is showing similar colors.
PayPal CEO Dan Schulman admitted during an interview with the Wall Street Journal that PayPal works with the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) when it considers blacklisting conservatives.
After being asked by the Wall Street Journal what “values” PayPal identifies with,” Schulman replied, “Probably the most important value to us is diversity and inclusion.”
“I think North Carolina was probably the moment that was the most visible, where we basically said this violates our core value and we need to make a very public stand on it,” claimed Schulman, referencing the time when PayPal pulled out of an investment in North Carolina because the state passed a bill making it mandatory for people to use the bathroom of their biological sex.
“Businesses need to be a force for good in those values and issues that they believe in. It shouldn’t come from backlash or people taking heat on it, because then it’s in response, as opposed to the definition of who you are and then how you react to the context that you find yourself in,” the PayPal CEO expressed, adding that the Charlottesville rally in 2017 was a “defining moment” for PayPal to start blacklisting conservatives.
Schulman claimed it “was a defining moment for us as a company,” that was “difficult,” because, “the line between free speech and hate, nobody teaches it to you in college. Nobody’s defined it in the law.”
During the interview, Schulman also admitted that the far-left SPLC helps to inform “PayPal’s decisions.”
“There are those both on the right and left that help us. Southern Poverty Law Center has brought things. We don’t always agree. We have our debates with them. We are very respectful with everyone coming in. We will do the examination carefully,” Schulman explained. “We’ll talk when we don’t agree with a finding: We understand why you think that way, but it still goes into the realm of free speech for us.”
The SPLC, which also reportedly works with Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, was forced to pay a $3.3 million settlements to anti-extremists activist Maajid Nawaz last year, after the organization included him on a list of “anti-Muslim extremists,” despite Nawaz being Muslim himself.
The lawsuit victory prompted at least 60 other organizations to also consider lawsuits against the SPLC, and in June, a Washington Post columnist declared the SPLC “has lost all credibility.”
Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch, and Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative were also temporarily blacklisted by PayPal, before being reinstated.
Last year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a liberal nonprofit for the defense of free expression and privacy online, expressed concern over payment processors becoming “de facto internet censors.”
“EFF is deeply concerned that payment processors are making choices about which websites can and can’t accept payments or process donations,” declared an EFF spokesman at the time. “This can have a huge impact on what types of speech are allowed to flourish online.”
“We’ve seen examples — such as when WikiLeaks faced a banking blockade — of payment processors and other financial institutions shutting down the accounts of websites engaged in legal but unpopular speech,” the spokesman continued. “I’m deeply concerned that we’re letting banks and payment processors turn into de facto Internet censors.”
Speaking from a personal viewpoint, I have to say I wish this weren’t true. PayPal has been a convenient way to send money and receive money to family members on occasion, as well as a conduit to make online purchases. Because of how I use it, I’ve never been charged a fee for their services, but one thing is for certain – I am now actively looking for a different way to pay, especially for online items.
