2020 was not a good year for freedom. Big Tech censorship and forced lockdowns helped the United States come in at twenty-fifth in the Economist’s Democracy Index.
The United States’ performance was ‘held back by a number of weaknesses,’ the report said.
It noted Trump’s refusal to accept the result of the presidential election, divisive culture wars and race riots, biased TV networks and how the pandemic encouraged Big Tech to police speech more than ever.
The report pulled no punches in tearing into Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in the ‘aggressive clearing of Lafayette Square near the White House in June 2020,’ when protesters were raging over the killing of George Floyd.
And the authors skewered him for alleging ‘voter fraud long after the election was over, without producing reasonable evidence to substantiate’ the claims.
However, the Economist’s report argued that Trump was part of a larger problem at the heart of America which has been ‘amplified by the mainstream media’ and by social media.
The report said: ‘The coronavirus pandemic encouraged the big tech giants to go further than they had previously in policing content that they deemed to be unacceptable.
‘In particular, the social media platforms took steps to filter, remove and censor content that questioned the lockdown policies pursued by governments or that expressed scepticism about vaccines.
‘However, the most astonishing intervention came before and after the US election, when Twitter attached fact checks to president Trump’s tweets, and ultimately (in January 2021) shut down his account. Facebook soon followed suit.
‘That unelected, unaccountable big tech CEOs can ban the sitting president of the US from their platforms should concern everyone who believes in freedom of expression.’
via UK Daily Mail
I grabbed a large portion of the article, but I suggest you go over and read the whole thing. Amazing that we are ranked behind the UK given that they don’t even have a First Amendment.
Pot Full of Frogs 