Black Label Article Argues Tech Companies Are Taking Away Free-Speech Rights

LOS ANGELES — Black Label Magazine has published an article titled “The Capitalist Oppression” that argues tech companies are whittling away free-speech rights.

Author Lincoln discusses Facebook’s new community standards and how they are squashing discussions of sex in general as well as artistic representations and the expectation that Facebook-owned Instagram will follow suit as well as Tumblr’s new crackdown on porn and the hope that Twitter doesn’t follow suit.

“They lured us in with the promise of an amazing, inclusive platform with which we could express ourselves, spread our message throughout the world and make connections we otherwise couldn’t,” Lincoln wrote in the piece that focuses largely on the effects of anti-sex trafficking legislation of FOSTA. “Once we were in, trapped, they tightened down the clamps.”

“Literally millions of people desire to consume what we create and distribute,” Lincoln said. “So, by censoring us, ostracizing us, discriminating on us, these companies are doing the same to the regular folks who seek to see and consume what we create. They are depriving our fans (and us, for that matter) of liberty and the pursuit of happiness — the very foundation of the U.S. They are preventing us from exercising our First Amendment right to express ourselves.”
 
Read the article here.