McKenna Geer, who is a competitive rifle shooter on Team USA for the Paralympics, is the latest person to be censored on social media. In her case, the offense was merely posting pictures with the guns that she uses in competitions. While possessing a gun is a protected individual right, Instagram will flag your posts and bar you from some sites if you post a picture with a gun . . . even if it is part of your sport at the Olympics or Paralympics.
Geer posted on Instagram screenshots of Instagram’s notification that her account was now restricted.
Team USA’s website states that the wife and mother has struggled with “amyoplasia arthrogryposis in her left hand and both feet, causing her muscles not to form properly.”
Geer competed in both the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo. She won a bronze medal in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
She noted that “athletes rely on our social media accounts to spread the word about our sport, firearm safety, build our personal brand, and connect with potential sponsors. Many of us (myself included) are either not paid or paid very little for our involvement in this sport. Our social media presence can often be the avenue that pays for us to continue competing.”
In addition to flagging her posts, the Instagram notification informed her that “Your account and content won’t appear in places like Explore, Search, Suggested Users, Reels, and Feed Recommendations.”
Geer’s experience is all too familiar.
While Instagram says that she may appeal the decision, these companies make it virtually impossible to speak to anyone at the company. They do not even make press contacts public. It is often very difficult for people to figure out how to appeal and they often face a corporate brick wall unless the matter gets into the press.
In this case, Instagram wins the gold medal for censorship with its actions undermining both free speech and gun rights. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 32% of U.S. adults say they own a gun. That is over 75 million Americans. For many of those citizens, shooting is a cherished sport and passion. Yet, taking a picture with a lawful weapon can get you flagged and censored under the systems in place at sites like Instagram.
It is not clear what the company does with other images of guns like these:
What utter nonsense JT. Instagram is a private company. If they choose to not have guns on their site that is their business.
Censorship? BS, it is policy. Pornography is also legal. What would happened if pornhub put screen shots of a porn move in in instagram? Sensorship? No, they want their side to be open to kids and if they allowed nudity then they would have to disallow kids.
You talk about the poor girls inability build a brand. What about a porn actress? Does she not also need to build her brand.
What a complete hypocrite you have become.
Having children see the Paralympic posing with the gun she uses in. Her sport is not offensive as pornography is. This is an obvious difference. Yes they are private company, but they use the Internet, which is public. They are given special privileges by the government because of that which protects them from lawsuits. if you want them to be treated as a private company, then let’s remove those protections otherwise yes this is censorship
And what a stupid troll you have become.
Every time that someone points out that an Anonymous post is poorly thought out she brings out the deplorable troll invective. Instead of responding with a counter argument she brings out the childish doo doo head response. One can only assume from her behavior that she does not have the mental capability to defend her positions. One would be correct in one’s assumptions when considering her lack of ability not only this one occasion but by reading on a daily basis her resort to the troll description of her more gifted critics. It could be possible that soon she will turn to the use of “oh yea, so’s your old man.” Mental midgetry at its very best.
dosen’t this censorship falls as discrimination under the americans with disabilities act
Facebook just removed as ‘spam’ my link to this article.
FYI Facebook nuked this article.
I posted a link to this article on censorship with a brief introductory comment: “Ever notice how they always say ‘We have so much more work to do?’ Well, here’s some.”
FB removed the post in entirety, comment and link.
You may see the removal notice here: https://x.com/HBxb52_Dogwater/status/1814648124532552163
Regards and keep up the great work. hb
Same here. Facebook took down Mr. Turley’s article today. Unreal…………
People have enjoyed being cruel and unfair to me. If they all died in a nuclear war, then they could no longer be cruel and unfair to me.
Cause you would be dead too. Are you older than ten years old?
Who is being cruel and unfair to you?
That air rifle she is pictured with costs more than any of my PB!!!
Never use Instagram, or Facebook. Boycott them both.
I don’t use instagram since every time I used it my account was hacked but many do use it.
This type of action is just like an accrediting organization saying we will not accredit your university, or law school, or medical school unless you institute DEI and CRT all through your organization and meet “our standards” only. No arguments please because we, the accrediting organization, reign supreme. “Piss us off at your peril” is the implied warning. There are useful occasions when the government can use a 2×4, so to speak, across the face of monopolistic organizations. Private organizations can become as obnoxious and overweening as the government and as inefficient. I feel that it is only right that we, as citizens, should be able to use one to duke it out with the other, while we citizens eat our popcorn in the viewing stands and enjoy the bloodbath, so to speak.
Just a note, DEI is alternate language for “affirmative action ” since the court struck down AA. CRT classifies as hogwash. BS is preferred to the language hogwash. It’s more philosophical.
The United Nations should be dissolved, and any Russian veto to dissolve it should be considered null and void. That would be like King George being allowed to veto the Constitution.
NATO should have been dissolved the day after the Soviet Union fell.
That’s what YOU think.
@Anonymi
It’s what I think, too. So do a lot of other people. I have no use for unelected plutocrats presuming they speak with anything other than authority that is really just a verbal embodiment of their own opinions. Discussion is great. Plutocrats, which are bad enough, believing they are autocrats, is another matter entirely. If the UN were truly just a forum this would not be an issue, but they can’t seem to help themselves.
NATO too.
An algorithm decided to censor this content. Algorithms are stupid. They crunch bits of data according to lines of software people wrote. They don’t understand intentions, purpose or anything in terms of human judgment.
This article is superficial. The real problem is algorithm-mediated culture, which is the greatest excursion away from humanism since the Age of Enlightenment began 300 years ago.
@pninca
Yup. Hence why reliance upon the technology for anything truly important or critical is idiocy. Eventually people will realize this, and further that ‘AI’ is just automation; a very resource hungry regurgitation machine. I guarantee no human moderator ever saw the post. Human engineers, however, did with haughty intention implement the code that did the filtering.
So-called “AI” is nothing more than a (nearly) randomly assembled batch consisting of a huge number of “if//then//else” control branching evaluations. As you mention, the lack of human oversight (which ironically is the principal advantage perceived by those employing it) is its inevitable downfall.
Was the American Revolution political violence?
I hate to ever ask for governmental help but when a near monopoly starts and continues to censor people and makes it impossible to argue for reconsideration or relief then their should be legislation creating an ombudsman-like means of an appeal process to stop this sort stupidity. The appeals process should be required of all companies using regulated airspace with an option to sue for slander and/or libel since this can in many instances affect income and competition and implies , by instagrams actions, that something is nefarious and/or illegal. I realize that instagram is a private company but they use public lines and regulated airspace as well as specific regulated frequencies in a variety of settings. Either that or start going for breakup of the monopoly. I’m a capitalist but I also like a level playing field and I despise monopolies, especially when those monopolies are favorites of the government currently in power.
It’s just another self righteous means or censorship and the people should have legal remedies.
“I’m a capitalist but . . .”
That “but” is always a tell.
Your (contradictory) position amounts to:
Government should not inject force into the free market — unless I don’t like that market or a company in that market gets too “big” (whatever that means).
Either one is for choice and trade, or one is for government intervention in the economy.
Being a capitalist is consistent with wanting to prevent monopolies. Free market competition can’t work when there are monopolies, because there is no competition (by definition). Antitrust laws are designed to protect competition, not competitors. They can be misused like anything else, but if used correctly and with the exercise of good judgment, they enhance a capitalist economy.
Old Man From Kansas- Thanks.
I had decided to ignore Sam’s comments because they were illogical and not even compatible with present practice. We all have regulation to some degree for public safety. Ie:medical licenses and such. An ombudsman is not the forcing government into the market but simply acting as a referee when certain entities abuse the rights of others. And the internet is regulated through the mediums in which it travels right now. We prefer it to be free but it requires servers and infrastructure and private entities can abuse that with their monopolistic strength and then you no longer have a free internet.
“. . . not even compatible with present practice.”
Speaking of illogical. That is called begging the question, as is the rest of your comment.
As for antitrust, it’s greatest evil is that it punishes a businessman for his success.
There is plenty of economic data over 200+ years that fear of monopolies is overblown
Monopolies can not exist or survive without government
And even near monopolies have been found to be constrained by the market
Contra fear mongers even a monopoly must behave like it has competition
Or it will
When the monopolies get so big and fat on govt contracts they start to control the narratives along with the politicos they buy along the way. The way our 4-5 HUGE defense contractors work in this way is obvious to anyone with their eyes open.
The ideal answer to monopolies would be to revoke the concept of corporate personhood. That road, though a high one, is fraught with dangerous obstacles. I once would have unreservedly advocated that happen, now I am far less certain that the benefits would exceed the damage over any reasonable period. An academic point, since it is a political impossibility.
Your argument is libertarian in its bent, but as usual with Libertarians it’s not realistic in its application. A State actor (governments) have and should have the ability to influence (laws, grants, loans) behavior that is beneficial to the public (writ large). Any organization that makes use of the processes or infrastructure of the ‘People’ should be subject to the preface of that guiding principle.
The problem enters when ‘actors’ in bad faith wish to influence/ban/abolish behaviors that are within the constitution by whatever means.
Actually it is based on real world data
The fact is that throughout history government acting in the economy beyond the basics of punishing force or fraud and enforcing agreements has a net negative impact
Often it is a small net negative
But it always makes us slightly worse off
I would suggest looking into coases law
Which not only proves that
But also proves that as the economy becomes more efficient-which is the direction the world is headed
That free markets work even better and government intervention even worse
Reality is not about how you feel things should work
Libertarians tend to be autistic
They are driven by facts
Horse manure! Persons controlling government entities are no more likely to act contrary to their own personal interests to the benefit of the “People writ large” (what a colossal load of collectivist crap that term embodies) than are the directors of a corporation. Less, actually, since one is free to decide whether or not to avail oneself of the products or services of a business, with the result that businesses (including corporations) will reflect the will of existing and potential customers, or will fail to survive. Government, on the other hand, is not subject to that moral survival test. It is inflicted on each of us involuntarily; it is singularly able to ignore the will of the governed through many and varied ruses that it has developed and perfected over time, and which it employs with ever greater effectiveness as time passes. That is the egregious and contradictory lie told by those who would dictate to their neighbors how to live their lives: that people are evil and must be controlled by government, but that somehow (wave of the magician’s wand and cape here) people imbued with government power are capable of setting that evil nature aside for the good of all. And spare me the homilies about democracies, limited democracies, and/or republics being the solution to that dilemma. This nation *has* demonstrated that severely restricting (hamstringing might be a better term) the power of government, along with mandating public participation in choosing those to be empowered, can *help* stymie the essentially evil nature of government for a limited time, it is most definitely not a cure. The proof of that premise lies all about you, if you just remove your blinders to allow yourself to see it.
It is irrelevant what you are for
Only free markets actually work
I don’t use it, I suggest if you find a need to visit these platforms pick one that limits censorship. It’s the sure way to see them end.
I follow quite a few history pages on Instagram and it is a struggle for them, since most military history photos have a gun or two in them. Even with marking them as sensitive and historical with disclaimers on how the post is in no way promoting violence of any kind, they still get suspended and demonetized. It’s all so insane.
People are stupid and sometimes the government does know better.
Don’t look now, but here comes Tbe Thing That Won’t Go Away — aka The Queen Pope of the Parallel Universe.
“Ready for Round 2: Why we Need Hillary more than ever”
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4780301-hillary-clinton-2024/
“The strongest argument against replacing President Joe Biden as the 2024 Democratic nominee is the notion that no suitable successor exists. But there is, and not just a good one but one of the most qualified people ever to run for the office: Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
LOL LOL LOL — It’s always good to start the day with a laugh.
Who didn’t see THIS coming? I wonder if everyone that voted for her the last time she ran (Professor Turley) will vote for her again this time.
Joetard had better either resign quickly or have his will made out.
Victoria’s Secret Service could do a better job of protecting presidential candidates.
Is Instagram a private entity?
I attempted to share this and was immediately censored by the thought police for violating their Community Standards rule on spam.
“Jul 20, 2024, We removed your post. Why this happened, It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/07/20/instagram-censors-paralympian-because-of-photo-with-competition-gun/. You shared this on your profile
This goes against our Community Standards on spam.”
I’m enjoying your book! Thank you for fighting for our First Amendment Rights!
Instagram is the most deleted app of 2024 (fun fact). I’ll be happy to see the company die a well-deserved death.
Reddit is real fast on the censorship trigger too.
What are they accomplishing with this? I am sure in their activist mind this will change something.
Activists act, they don’t think