In an interview with Big League Politics, filmmaker George Llewellyn-John noted that he wants to inform as many people as possible that the social media behemoths have become Orwellian speech Nazis, even though their platforms have become an integrated part of modern life and exclusion from them can negatively impact people and businesses.
As Big League Politics noted:
The movie, set to be released on May 15, will offer a behind-the-scenes perspective on the recent waves of censorship at the hands of big tech companies that has resulted in prominent conservatives being removed from the public sphere.
“People think it’s just social media, we still have this outdated view of it,” Llewellyn-John wrote in response to an interview request from BLP. “In reality, social media is where we live our lives, where we refine our views and hammer out important cultural issues.
“It’s the ‘one person, one vote’ principle,” he noted further. “It doesn’t matter how educated you are or what your income is or what you do for a living – you get a vote. It should be the same for social media.”
The filmmaker said he hopes his project will help “mainstream conservatives” get a clue about how impactful social media is on their political objectives, while convincing the Left that they, too, are not going to be immune from an all-powerful social media cabal at some point in the future.
“I hope people on the Right, particularly the mainstream Right, will realize how big a problem this is for them.” Llewellyn-John added that he hopes that “people on the Left will realize this issue is going to start affecting them as well.”
Continuing, he noted, “We have to stop viewing free speech as a one-sided issue.”
The timing for release is “perfect”
The filmmaker said he doesn’t align politically with all of the figures depicted in his film. However, he nevertheless believes their stories are important for society because “if the First Amendment isn’t for everyone then it isn’t for anyone” (and look — it takes a Brit to point that out to the American Left).
While his film had been in production for a while, he noted that “as things heated up” in terms of the coverage of social media shadow banning and deplatforming he ramped up his production schedule so that he could get the picture released by May 15.
He began production of “You Can’t Watch This” in January, he said, so the flick includes some highlights and critical moments in the history of social media censorship. This includes British Right-leaning activist “Tommy Robinson making his last livestream on Facebook before he was banned,” as well as conservative and Proud Boys founder “Gavin McInnes wrestling with the prospect of starting from scratch” after being deplatformed by virtually all social media.
Llewellyn-John told Big League Politics he believes the timing behind his film’s release is “perfect” and that “for the people involved it’s never been more urgent.”
The film will be released exclusively on Vimeo, Llewellyn-John said.
Timing, indeed. Just last week Alex Jones and his Infowars news organization, along with conservatives Paul Joseph Watson and Laura Loomer, were completely banned from Facebook, which is home to more than 1 billion users.
President Donald Trump has expressed solidarity with conservatives who have been banned recently and in the past, as well as concern over whether the platforms should be regulated by the government. (Related: POTUS Trump blasts ‘illegal’ social media BIAS and censorship, vows actions.)
Attorney General William Barr said during his confirmation hearings in January he would examine “antitrust issues” regarding the big tech platforms.
Read more about how the tech giants are stifling free speech and the First Amendment at TechGiants.news and FirstAmendment.news.
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