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"Sensitive Content Warning
This post may contain sensitive content. In general, Google does not review nor do we endorse the content of this or any other blog. For more information about our content policies, please visit the Blogger Community Guidelines."
If you scroll down to my post from earlier today, "A stark reminder that Trump is a pedo," you will see a message that says "This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post." The message above is what you will see when you actually click on "click here" because a reader flagged my post as violating Blogger's Community Guidelines.
There is nothing in the post that would violate the Community Guidelines from any organization anywhere in the world.
Before I begin my dissent, I think it only fair to inform my readers that Google donated $1 million dollars to Donald Trump's inauguration fund and that their current CEO Sundar Pichai has attended dinners at the White House with other tech executives and recently thanked Trump for his help in an antitrust case resolution that netted Google parent holding company Alphabet, Inc. a cool $230 million dollars in market cap.
For those who may not have seen the post, it's a tweet from Bluesky which highlights that a group known as The Secret Handshakes erected a statue called "Best Friends Forever" on the National Mall of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands with three plaques that note the statue celebrates their friendship and is in commemoration of September being Friendship Month. The plaques also make use of alleged quotes from Trump's birthday card to Epstein in the infamous Epstein birthday book.
[Blogger's Note: The statue has already been removed from the National Mall by the National Park Service despite The Secret Handshakes having obtained a permit that allowed it to remain in place until September 28th and having hired security to oversee it. This serves as another stark reminder that the only free speech Donald Trump cares about is his own that that of his followers.]
In perusing through Blogger's Community Guidelines, I only came across three guidelines that it remotely could have possibly violated, and all three would be a significant stretch. The first would be Adult Content if someone were bothered by two men holding hands. I find this hard to believe as the Supreme Court decided in 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges that same sex couples had the right to marry and if two men holding hands or two women kissing were a violation of Community Guidelines than surely any heterosexual couples participating in either would also be a violation and that seems, frankly, absurd.
The second would be if it violated Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation, but as there is nothing of the sort in the post other than mentioning Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of procuring a child for prostitution and was awaiting trial for the sex trafficking of minors when he committed suicide. Considering that those facts were not mentioned in the post (and one would have to do an internet search to find them as I did), it stretches credibility that the post violated this standard. One would also suppose that having left my original title as is would also be a strong indicator that this was not the violation.
The last would be that the post was Misleading. But as it is well documented that Trump and Epstein were friends, and the post mentions nothing more than a statue of Trump and Epstein that was erected on the National Mall to celebrate Friendship Month (all of which are facts), it's hard to see how it mislead anyone on anything. It does mention that Trump and his supporters were angry about it, but that, too, is also documented.
In fairness, Blogger did not delete the post (they also said I could appeal it, but I'll be damned if I could find out how). It is available after one clicks the box that allows one to view the content. But it still stifles speech, as it insinuates that there may be something distressing in the post when there is nothing of the sort. It merely questions, as does the statue, whether the President of the United States is a pedophile and reminds us that he has refused to release the information in the Epstein Files that may answer that question, as well as telling us who else was involved in Epstein's perversions. We have a right to know the perpetrators of such heinous crimes, and a solid majority of Americans (79%) are in favor of having all documents related to the Epstein case released.
In the end, this post was flagged because a reader didn't like my opinion. And instead of standing up for free speech, Google, like far too many other American media companies, capitulated. They relinquished one of the most important--if not the most important--rights that the Founding Fathers gave us: the right to express our opinions about the government that rules us.
What they should have done is tell the flagger what I'm about to tell him or her.
Don't like my opinion?
Tough shit.
Fuck Donald Trump
Peace,
emaycee
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