While China is promoting its authoritarian practices around the world, it looks like liberal Silicon Valley has beat them to it by being the first to promote censorship in America.

Kevin Drum, a writer on Mother Jones, wrote that “…freedom of speech is an American tradition, not just a legal concept, and social media is where people speak these days. If you get banned from Facebook and half a dozen other big platforms, you’ve been effectively silenced.”

Unfortunately, various conservative platforms and speakers, such as Infowars, Alex Jones, and Milo Yiannopoulos, are now banned by Facebook and Instagram for “spreading hate and falsehoods”. Thus, their free speech online is now greatly limited.​

For now, Facebook is just testing the waters, it has not yet announced any indication of expanding the bans, despite that it is widely expected to do so. Even more concerning is that liberals are cheering them on, applauding Facebook for “scrubbing away hate” on the internet. Fortunately, Twitter has yet to indicate that it will follow in Facebook’s steps. However, given popular (liberal) pressure, Twitter’s free speech stance may not last long.

Of course, one can argue that Facebook has the right to censor views it doesn’t like since the social media platform is privately owned. But as Trump wisely proved, free trade and economics isn’t always going to preserve freedom. After all, China and others have exploited the free market at America’s expense. And the Silicon Valley giant is next.

Thus, it is quite a shame that Facebook has banning unfavorable (conservative) views in the name of free market. But as an American, I believe that the First Amendment is more important than “free” market.

China may be promoting censorship far away, but Facebook is doing it right under our noises. The only thing more dangerous than an enemy outside your house is one that’s inside your house. Let’s all wake up to this modern-day equivalent of book-burning.