On September 16th, Paula Bolyard at PJ Media wondered Why Was Big Tech So Quick to Scrub Ryan Routh’s Accounts?

Why indeed.

Bolyard writes this:

PJ Media reached out to Facebook, X, and the FBI for answers, but got no response. Specifically, I asked Facebook and X: ‘Can you direct me to your policy, if one exists, that prompted you to lock down Ryan Routh’s account on Sunday? Can you explain your rationale for removing accounts associated with those accused of high-profile crimes? Is law enforcement involved in the decision? If so, what are the channels for doing that?’ I also asked the FBI if that agency was involved in locking down the accounts. Crickets all around.

I’d like to know the answers in even more granular detail than that.

How is this scrubbing done, specifically?  Does law enforcement ask these social media sites to do it, or are they able to break into the account and do it themselves. If so, do they?

What is the legal rationale for this?  Has the DOJ issued a memo on this?  If so, I want to see it.

When something like this happens, some government somebody picks up the phone and calls some other government somebody. Who within the government makes and/or takes that call?  I especially want the name of the person receiving that call.  Or at the very least, their job title and department.  Is there just one person? More than one person?  A team?  If it’s more than one person, then these people have to have been instructed what to do. What are those instructions?  Are they written down? Can we see them?  If not, why not?

Are there people at each of these social media sites who are contacts for these government censors?  Who are they?  Again, I want names and job titles.  Are they government liaisons?

In short, how does this work?  Specifically?  And can it be defunded?  Surely nobody is doing this for free, as it is a government operation.  So has anyone in Congress been briefed on the particulars of this person/team of censors?  How much money are we paying them?

There must be a paper trail. Surely somebody in government can trace, track, reveal it. The public has a right to know and if someone is a named perp, we have a right to find and make judgments of our own on who this person is, based on their digital footprint. It shouldn’t be the exclusive purview of the federal government. They’re not our babysitters and they surely should not be our censors.

Why can’t the whole apparatus be defunded?

And finally, why can’t it be defended?  If there’s nothing to be ashamed of, then there is absolutely no reason we shouldn’t know all of this, down to the last penny of salary we are paying for a named person in a known department to remove these social media posts.  I’d like to see a person standing at a podium explaining why they did it, wouldn’t you?  We should be able to question our censors, at least.

Or do we not know because it is, in fact, indefensible?

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.