The Four Color Media Monitor

Zero Hedge addressed the troubling subject of Twitter, already notorious for censoring conservative-run accounts, now barring any discussion of comics like Mike Baron's Private American, along with anything else involving the border crisis the USA's been suffering from for nearly 2 years already. They also reveal an interesting development involving Pfizer, who recently partnered with Marvel to produce a comic all about their Corona medicines:

The book has been immediately dated due to Pfizer's recent admission under oath at the EU Parliament that their covid vaccines were never tested in the prevention of viral transmission, upending months of claims that getting the vax meant saving grandma and grandpa from exposure to the disease. The claim that the vaccines were “proven” to prevent transmission was also used as the basis for covid passport schemes in nations across the west, trampling the personal rights of millions.

Pfizer essentially gets to say and do what they want on Twitter, and Marvel has the same luxury. Neither company has anything to fear in terms of their voices being censored due to the political leanings they might exhibit, the issues they address or the fallacies they might spread. Some groups are protected because they have the “correct” politics.

As I'd noted before, what I thought was even more tasteless about the Pfizer comic was their illustrating Carol Danvers in the mohawk outfit of Capt. Marvel, as though their disrespect for the character couldn't have become any worse. That alone was absolutely terrible from a visual perspective. And now, things aren't getting any better with the discovery Baron's latest GN has encountered censorship on Twitter:

His latest effort is a book called 'Private American', which tells the story of a US border overrun by illegal immigration and human trafficking, a border patrol agency overwhelmed and a federal government that does nothing to help. The hero, a Cuban American and army veteran, decides to step in to thwart the criminal threat.

If we set aside the comic book element, it's basically a documentation of current events.

Without the backing of large corporate marketing machines like Marvel, Baron has to turn to social media to promote his work. Unfortunately, Twitter has not been receptive. The account for Private American has been permanently banned and Baron is not allowed to use any alternative accounts to discuss his creative efforts. Twitter claims that the comic violates its terms of service and that the Private American account is used for “abusive behavior.” No examples of violations have yet been provided by the social media company.

When asked what the real reason for the ban might be, Baron and his team had this to say:

“We think the ban is most likely due to the content being pro-border control. We have seen our last three projects deal with some kind of big tech censorship: Florida Man was banned from the comic books subreddit (with 2.7 million comicbook fans) because moderators loath conservative creators. Facebook rejected our ads for Thin Blue Line (a pro police graphic novel), until FOX News did a story about it and they relented, saying there was violence depicted but upon another review, it was acceptable. Now Twitter has said we use multiple accounts for "abusive behavior" and to evade banning.

If we were using multiple accounts to abuse people, then why not ban ALL of the accounts I operate? We can show proof that all of our Private American posts are promotional or only share news stories dealing with the border chaos.

When we asked Twitter to be more specific of what we could do to remedy this, they never responded again.”

This is very sad, of course, but honestly, why does anyone continue to use them, and not sites like MeWe or Gettr? If you know where to look, there's a whole variety of other social media sites where one could promote their work with less concerns about censorship than Twitter provides, yet it seems like the latter's mystifyingly the only social media site anybody cares about.

Certainly, it's bad when major social media sites like Twitter censor products like Baron's. Nevertheless, if more variety in what social media sites one uses were emphasized, it wouldn't matter as much. I hope Private American does get the audience it deserves for the subject it deals with. But that's why it's better not to rely solely on Twitter. Besides, what is so great about a site where you have a character limit in writing a post, and no edit function?

Labels: censorship issues, good writers, indie publishers, politics, science, technology