Craig Kelly is set to tackle technocratic giant Facebook in court over the social media platform’s claims that the Australian member of parliament had been allegedly spreading false information about treatments for COVID-19.
The Silicon Valley company suspended Kelly from their platform in February. They then made that suspension permanent in April.
The February suspension was for five quotes from different sources on the effectiveness of HCQ+Zinc, and Ivermectin.
The April ban was because of posts citing medical professionals providing updated information on the effectiveness of the two alternative medicines as prophylaxis, and treatment.
When contacted about the permaban, Kelly said, Facebook refused to qualify their reasons, and simply reverted him back to its EULA, citing company policy, and user agreements.
No evidence, said Kelly, was provided to show where he’d been guilty of spreading misinformation, or how the information he had shared was wrong.
Facebook’s rule of thumb since 2020 has been to tag and censor via an algorithm, posts mentioning COVID-19. They also threaten to delete “unapproved content” or boot accounts sharing it.
Any account mentioning HCQ+Zinc, and Ivermectin, is met with a similar response, albeit a different warning: “some unapproved COVID-19 treatments may cause serious harm.”
Facebook’s source for this, and probable justification, is the World Health Organisation’s hostility to any authority that questions or differs from their approved party-line.
In this case, Facebook technocrats, with unproven allegations, acting on the authority of the CCP aligned WHO, has banned an elected representative from a public space, denying his electorate access to their chosen representative.
The argument that “Facebook is a private organisation with the right to deny service to anyone it chooses” counts, but it’s ultimately asinine.
Facebook isn’t a battler running a small business, respectfully refusing to make cakes for a cash-strapped litigation antagonist from within the LGBTQAAI+ community.
Facebook has made itself almost indispensable. The big tech giant has made itself the centre of business communication. It is a public hub equivalent to the public square.
This means that Facebook doesn’t just connect people with power, it connects politicians with the people who they’re paid to represent.
To deny Kelly’s constituents access to him, through a service they’ve come to depend on – and sometimes have to depend on – means that Facebook is wielding a lot of power over constitutional democracies.
Denial of what is to many a necessary service also gives Kelly’s political opponents an unfair advantage. The strong inference we can draw from this is that Facebook is actively, even if sometimes unknowingly, interfering in the election process.
It’s not Facebook’s job to boot politicians from parliament or the public square. That job is in the hands of constituents.
Kelly told Caldron Pool, that he’s not interested in money, but principle. Facebook “are not the arbiters of truth.” Adding, “I want a level playing field because Facebook are not playing fair.”
It’s a big fight, but the member for Hughes isn’t backing down. He’s crowdfunding his lawsuit against Facebook on the grounds of defamation. With this Clive Palmer, himself often the target of defamatory legacy media mythologising, has stepped up as a major financial contributor.
Kelly said that he also plans on putting forward a bill to curb Facebook’s power over people and nations.
The goal is to defend freedom of speech, and guard the integrity of Australia’s elections, by stopping potential backdoor foreign interference.
The lawsuit could be a game changer.
If Kelly and the Australian public supporting him succeed, the case will open the way for what Kelly called, a “platoon of the best medical minds backing him up” to open defamation proceedings against Facebook of their own.
Many of them are implicated in Facebook’s as yet unsubstantiated accusations against Craig Kelly.
If Kelly’s bill and subsequent lawsuit succeed, the decisions by Facebook to suppress reasoned dissent and rational opposing viewpoints may prove to be their Achilles heel.
Kelly is up against a large leftist technocratic political, and financial power bloc, that is increasingly proving itself to be a threat to constitutional democracy.
As such, Craig Kelly vs Facebook isn’t just David vs Goliath, it’s a very real Us vs Them.
