We can all attest to the fact that social media companies have been censoring conservative viewpoints for quite some time now, though when it started can be debated.

In the RedState community, our values typically conflict with the uber-liberals who rule Silicon Valley, so you may even have been the victim of censorship yourself.

We know all too well that colleges across America have been blocking conservative speakers from appearing on campus for years, but social media has remained relatively free in the area of speech.

Until the age of Trump, that is.

From Youtube removing videos and users to Twitter blocking the president of the United States, social media censorship has gotten out of control.

A few months ago, Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s segment featuring Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan sharing her personal experience caring for COVID participants was fact-checked by Facebook and Instagram and determined to be “False Information.”

One problem — the sources associated with the so-called “fact-checking” had nothing to do with the whistleblower Carlson was interviewing.

There are even a few consistently principled people on the left who don’t like what they’re seeing. Reporter Glenn Greenwald, made famous by breaking the Edward Snowden story — one of the biggest whistleblower stories in history — has been extremely critical of left-wing media censorship during the 2020 election cycle.

Greenwald is an old-school liberal who believes in the First Amendment even when it’s exercised to praise someone he doesn’t like. He may not be a Trump supporter, but he hasn’t been holding his tongue, and he even quit his job as a reporter and co-founder at The Intercept in disgust over its censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Let’s not forget that social media giants Facebook and Twitter blocked the oldest daily newspaper in America, the New York Post, just 10 days before the election. That is what happens when a media source is willing to report the news.

Greenwald has made it very clear the liberal media would not report anything that might hurt Joe Biden, no matter how damning the evidence might be. In addition to refusing to report anything negative about Biden, they refused to ask him difficult questions or bring up the laundry list of his troubled political controversies, including during previous runs for the presidency.

If you’re right of center, your platform for free speech is ever-shrinking. We hear about people being in “Facebook jail,” having posts removed, seeing fact-check labels over posts calling them “false” or “misleading,” having algorithms tweaked to prevent them from being seen, shadowbanning, or ghosting. In the worst scenario, people are de-platformed, having their account permanently blocked or removed.

The Freedom Foundation has been stopped from promoting posts on Twitter. We have been blocked from boosting posts on FB. We are in litigation over being kicked out of public buildings for telling public employees about their rights not to fund unions and several local governments have blocked our emails in order to prevent public employees from hearing from us.

Shutting down your opponent’s speech is only necessary when your ideas and arguments are not strong enough to stand on their own.

Continue to speak truth to power, and find ways to have your voice heard.

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” — Ron Paul

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Matthew Hayward is the Washington Outreach Director for the Freedom Foundation, a national non-profit organization committed to helping free public sector employees from union tyranny.