SOCIAL MEDIA GUARDIANSHIP OF TRUTH: WHOSE TRUTH IS IT ANYWAY?

ICHEOKU says truth is somewhat relative as one man's truth could sometimes be another man's falsehood. It generally depends on the context such as who is telling the truth, where the truth is being told, what the truth is about, when the truth is told and why the subject truth is told or being vetted. For instance, a  statement that the time now is 9:00 o'clock is both true and false, depending on the time zone. 

So, the fact that a person in a particular time zone where it is 9:00 o'clock said that it is 9:00 o'clock does not necessarily translate his peculiar truth to the truth of other people who are outside the time zone. Also a woman who is considered as fat in Hollywood could be considered as very thin in Louisiana or South Carolina where women are expected to have some meat to their bones, but that does not make either opinions exclusively truth or false. It is relative, as what is true somewhere does not necessarily become true elsewhere and this also applies to practically everything in life, not science based. 

When Socrates theorized that the earth was round, to the people of Ancient Greece that was heresy because the truth to them at that particular time was that the earth was flat. The debate of chicken and the egg which came first is still raging because the truth differs depending on which school of thought that is being asked. When a fly is swathed with a broom, the truth as to which particular broom stick actually killed the fly is still arguable since a particular broom stick and not all the brooms killed the fly. Another example is a person making $20,000 a year in the United States of America is considered poor in America, but the same person is considered as very rich in the slums of Delhi. 

When a person in the Bronx says it is raining and a person in Manhattan says it is not raining, whose truth is it that it is raining in New York City? It is such open ended possibilities that encourages debates and shuns herd theory as people should be allowed and encouraged to engage in debates and not follow a streamlined thought process that leads to atrophy. Social media giants are forcing American people into a tunnel visioned belief system without the courtesy of debates and such is dangerous to independent thinking. 

They want everyone to conform to a stipulated version of truth but without explaining to people whose version of truth is that and why that version of truth is superior to others. Their strong arm imposition of their will is dangerous to free and clear thinking and all rational minded people should see it for what it is without regard to partisan politics. They were allowed to establish and operate alongside traditional media, television and newspapers, but they will not allow different opinions to freely air on their platforms. It is a shocking abuse of power for these social media giants to continuously engage in this censorship and nobody made them guardians of truth and truth is not a one cap fits all entity. 

For example, when President Donald John Trump tweets that mail in ballots leads to fraudulent voting and Jack Dorsey's Twitter challenges him on the truthfulness of it by deleting the tweet, it becomes whose position is the truth? It depends on whose truth we are talking about. The president was telling a truth within his knowledge because there were many reported cases of voter fraud by mail which backed his position. But does this  mean that Jack Dorsey's Twitter lied when they challenged the veracity of what the president said as being untrue, that there is no fraud in mail in votes? 

Not really, because they do not have necessary information on voter fraud by mail in ballots which is available to the president and others who share in the president's position. Again, affirming that truth is relative and that Jack Dorsey was wrong to dismiss the president's tweet as false and unverifiable, especially when instances abound where some people have been caught and prosecuted for tampering with mail in ballots. 

ICHEOKU used to think on the absolutism of something is "either"/"or" until read the story of the six blind men of Hindustan who went to see the elephant. As always, blind people "see" things by touching and feeling them, so one of the men felt the elephant's ear and said the elephant is like a big fan. Another one touched the elephant's leg and said the elephant is like a tree; one of them touched the elephant's trunk and said the elephant is like a big snake; another touched the elephant's stomach and said the elephant is like a wall, another touched the elephant's tusk and said the elephant is like a big spear and the last one touched the elephants tail said the elephant is like a huge rope. 

They all spoke their peculiar truths relative to their personal experience but that did not make any of them right or truthful as to the nature of the elephant and they did not lie either. But were it in today's social media world none of the men would have been allowed to even hold or share their respective opinions on their perception. This is wrong and this is what the social media giants are forcing on American people, the lack of independent thinking and it is not right. When you kill a person's free thinking, you deprive the person the capacity of his humanity and make him into an unthinking zombie, a deadman walking. It destroys the humanity in him and it is not good for the American society or any other society for that matter. 

If Mark Zuckerberg, Pichal Sundararajan and Jack Dorsey were not allowed to think outside the box on human interaction and dissemination of information activities and forced to believe that it is only through television and newspapers that people get their information, Facebook, Google and Twitter would not have been in existence now. It is what led to their companies and which sustains it that they want to deprive others by forcing only one viewpoint on the people. It is not right as it leads to stagnation of thought and turns a society inwards. 

Truth can sometimes be as to some part of a story, in which case it needs to be additionally qualified. But the failure to accordingly qualify it does not make the story untrue or false. We should recall that the president did not say that all mail in ballots are fraudulent; he said some of them are fraudulent. To that extent his allusion that mail in ballots leads to fraud is both correct and truthful, because evidence of such fraudulent mail in ballots exist. 

But Jack Dorsey would rather accept a CNN and Washington Post fact checking of the president as true, disregarding the fact that the same CNN fed the nation the Russian Collusion cockamamie for nearly three years; castigated the president for saying that his campaign was spied on, declared that General Michael Flynn was guilty as sin, said that the Covington High School Nicholas Sandmann mocked the old native Indian fella and proclaimed that Bob Muller had the goose on the president. All of which later turned out to be false, yet Twitter never denounced CNN for any of these false stories and wants American people to rely on the CNN's fact check of the president's tweet. Really? 

So, how credible is CNN that their own version of truth should now surmount the president's own version of truth. But Twitter wants us to believe that CNN is their truth whisperer and that the president lies. It is what Twitter will not dare do to the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Russia and China that they gleefully do to the president of the United States of America simply because they have the freedom of expression to do so. 

Ironically it is the same freedom of expression which these social media giants enjoy and which enables them to endlessly criticize the president that they are depriving contrarians, whose viewpoints and opinions are different from their prescribed and acceptable community-conformed opinions. They gleefully ban from their platforms people who refused to be pigeonholed into particular tolerable opinions which the social media said their "community" does not approve and you ask yourself, what is the make up of the community. 

Where then is the freedom to opine freely when opinions must conform to an acceptable community's guideline. If somethings never made any reasonable sense, the control of speech by these Social Media giants definitely is one of them. They said that they are exercising their right to own media platforms and should not be regulated, yet they are regulating membership of their platforms by blocking those who have strong opinions which they consider unacceptable to their community. Whose community is that and who constitute the membership of it anyway? 

How can they expect somebody in rural Hutchinson Kansas to have or share the same opinion on things with somebody in ultra liberal San Francisco California, yet they insist you either comply with their "community" standards or be blocked from their platforms and sometimes even banned because your views in Kansas are not acceptable to their California "community" standard. It is unbelievably unimaginable that these social media giants are engaged in such lopsided requirement of conformity and without regard to the different peculiar experiences of the two places. 

If it was in China that Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg or Pichal Sundararajan did what they are doing to President Donald John Trump, they would have since been sent to a reeducation camp to have their thinking rebooted. If it was in Russia, may be they will be place on a forced time out inside one of the gulags in Siberia for an extended vacation. If it was in North Korea, Kim Jong Un's ever starving pack of wild dogs would have had a festival of some flesh meat. if it were in Iran, treason would have been a reason to break their necks with nooses inside a prison. 

But luckily for them and thankful to an American society which guarantees everyone the right to speak freely, a right which they are denying some American people, these people have the temerity to go after the president and the presidents supporters by restricting their opinions on their social media platforms. ICHEOKU says Facebook, Google and Twitter should be mindful of the fundamental freedom of expression enjoyed in America and should provide their platforms without conditions and not worry about what people choose to share thereon. It is their opinion and they reserve the right to freely express them, including on social media platforms. 

Like with telephone companies which do not regulate what people talk about on their telephones, provided their bills are paid, the Social Media platform owners should either consider charging a use fee for their services or just make it a one cap fits all place where people can freely express their opinion, regardless of the "community" touchy feelings. They should not become arbiters of truth or baby seaters of users, guarding what people say on their platforms, afterall those views are never attributed to them. A matter made more poignant because they cannot be sued for defamation or for views expressed on their platforms by third parties, thus begging the question, why do the censorship. 

The social media giants are not the police or security agencies to worry about what people post on their platforms that might amount to a criminal behavior. They should let the respective agencies worry about them and arrest the offenders when they cross the line. They should therefore get out of the way and let freedom of expression ring loud and reign supreme on their platforms. They should allow users who feel incensed or contradicted by anyone's post to challenge the expressed thoughts with their own counter argument, but not play their savior by canceling them. It is not right and it is not fair to spirited debates. Enough of the censorship.