A Northern Idaho internet provider became the first to dish out to Silicon Valley social media sites a taste of their own medicine, the Gateway Pundit reported.
YourT1Wifi announced that it was banning the companies over their active role in inciting anti-democratic behavior through a suppressive censorship campaign.
Umm from my North Idaho internet provider…. this is INSANE. pic.twitter.com/vzy9tSDRAp
— krista yep (@yes4yep) January 10, 2021
“Our company does not believe a website or social networking site has the authority to censor what you see and post and hide information from you, stop you from seeing what your friends and family are posting,” the email sent to subscribers read. “This is why with the amount of concerns, we have made this decision to block these two websites from being accessed from our network.”
The ban was set to take effect on Wednesday.
Expectedly, some customers were not happy.
“I was pretty shocked that they were just coming out and saying that,” said Krista Yep, whose complaint was circulating on Twitter, according to Spokane’s KREM 2. “If it’s not illegal it’s highly unethical.”
The move may have made it doubly difficult for leftists in the rugged region, where cellular coverage is also spotty in places, to access their social media feeds.
Throughout the country, the aggressive free-speech crackdown has led conservative users of the sites to delete their accounts and flock to alternatives like Parler and Gab.
But leftists have fought back, with Amazon forcing Parler indefinitely off the server where it was hosted by claiming—without evidence—that it had played a role in inciting protesters last Wednesday to breach the US Capitol.
That has prompted some—including President Donald Trump, whose Twitter account was deleted Friday—to call for a new conservative-friendly social-media infrastructure to be developed.
It also prompted Parler to sue Amazon for violating its contract, as well as anti-trust laws.
Many stockholders also dumped the social media sites, leading Twitter to post 12% losses at opening on Monday.
