Podcaster Joe Rogan has warned conservatives to be wary of the increased censorship of their ideas on social media and slammed the wider impacts of what he says are the left-leaning ideologies that dictate what is and isn’t allowed on these platform.
During a recent podcast with comedian Greg Fitzsimmons, Rogan said that if he was a Republican, he’d be “extremely concerned” about censorship on social media and the idea within these companies that censoring conservatives is “the right thing to do.”
“For sure, conservatives are being discriminated against on social media platforms,” Rogan said.
Rogan pointed to hidden camera footage showing employees from big tech companies talking about the ways they can silence conservative voices while discussing the topic.
When assessing the possible motivations for this censorship, Fitzsimmons suggested that the left-wing Silicon Valley giants may be unhappy that the social media platforms they created helped to elect Donald Trump:
“Well, what’s weird about it is that when you think about social media coming out of Silicon Valley, which is famously left-wing, the election was really swung by the internet in Trump’s favor.
You know, whether or not you want to call them bots that were set up by Russia or whether or not it was just they were a well-organized campaign. They just, they were really smart and very sharp about videos that they put out. They, they have a thing now where they put out a lot of memes, that they encourage people to make memes about. They’re all over [it]. Democrats are so far behind the Republicans when it comes to using, using it.
But you’re right. I mean, if you, if you ban certain people from Twitter and from YouTube, that’s censorship.”
Shadowbanning of conservatives and algorithmic discrimination was another topic raised by Rogan. He said that even if conservative figures aren’t outright banned from social media, many are being shadowbanned which makes it very difficult for people to find their content.
Rogan also touched on the wider implications of left-leaning ideologies dominating what is allowed and what is prohibited on these social media platforms and the hypocrisy that this creates. Specifically, he highlighted how feminist journalist Meghan Murphy was banned from Twitter for life after posting a tweet stating that “Women aren’t men,” yet convicted criminal O.J. Simpson is allowed to have a Twitter account.
Twitter’s “deadnaming” policy, which prohibits referring to a transgender individual by their old name, is another area that came under fire from Rogan.
“Do you know what else you get banned for, for life? Deadnaming!” Rogan said. “Ridiculous. This is the world we’re living in. This is this political ideology world. This is the reason why someone like Elizabeth Warren thinks she has to say taxpayer money should pay for prisoners, some f*ing mass murderer who decides he’s a woman now, to get this transitionary surgery, transition surgery, reassignment surgery. Whatever you want to call it.”
