Amid this last week of primary election campaigning, media personality and Republican gubernatorial candidate Chad Prather has been sentenced to a week of suspension from Facebook.
8 days before Election Day and I get put into 7 days of Facebook jail. Seems legit. #prather2022
— Chad Prather (@WatchChad) February 21, 2022
Life, Love, and Liberty podcaster Monica Matthews is calling this action by Facebook “election interference” and “a matter of national security.”
BREAKING-FB Election Interference – Suspends TX Gubernatorial candidate Chad Prather a week before primary. Election interference- A matter of national security @SenTedCruz @Jim_Jordan @WatchChad @ScottPresler @kylenabecker @SaraCarterDC @breeadail
— Monica Matthews On Air (@monicaonairtalk) February 21, 2022
Prather’s week-long ban from Facebook is just one instance of Facebook’s increasingly totalitarian censorship that has many Americans searching for an alternative. According to Facebook, Prather violated community standards on harassment and bullying when he responded to a woman trolling his account and essentially told her to do more research and spare him the “victimhood.”
Facebook, along with Twitter and YouTube, banned former President Donald Trump from their platforms following the events of January 6, 2020, bringing into question the legitimacy of the oversight overlords and fact-checkers.
In December, Facebook quietly admitted that its fact-checkers are espousing opinions, rather than the facts they purport to express.
Prather told Texas Scorecard that this decision by Facebook “is clear election interference on the part of Big Tech. Whether you agree with me, think I’m abrasive in my style, or politically incorrect, I have not violated any supposed community guidelines. We have got to fight for our rights to speak freely.”
According to Prather, “We have failed to yield reform to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, to bring successful antitrust actions, or to initiate effective FTC investigations or enforcement proceedings, and this is the result. In situations such as this, the well-established legal principles of common carriage and public accommodation offer the basis for states to place non-discrimination and disclosure requirements on the major internet platforms.”
Incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott told Texans in March of 2021 that Texas would be “taking a stand” against Big Tech censorship and threw his support behind Senate Bill 12 as a measure of protection against viewpoint censorship. SB 12 was killed in the Texas House of Representatives during the regular session.
A similar bill eventually passed in the second special legislative session. House Bill 20 burdens large social media corporations with extensive legal fees if they engage in viewpoint discrimination based on political or religious affiliations of a user, and allows the Texas attorney general to prosecute such cases on behalf of Texans wrongfully de-platformed.
In December, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas halted the implementation of the legislation, claiming a violation of the First Amendment as social media corporations maintain editorial discretion.
Recalling Abbott’s declaration to halt viewpoint censorship by Big Tech, Prather said, “So much for Abbott’s promise of new legislation that he intended to make ‘censoring’ conservatives ‘against the law’ in Texas. Meanwhile, he’s remained completely committed to subsidizing Facebook’s operations in our state.”
