What's Free? How Social Media Controls Content Creators With Speech Restrictions

I start this blog by quoting someone that in essence I’m really reluctant to quote. Not because I don’t like the person, but because of his policies towards the black community in the 1980’s. The person I’m speaking of is none other than Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th President of the United States of America. Mr. Reagan once said;

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same”.

Now I will admit, those were and still are very powerful words. The reason why I’m quoting the 40th president of the United States of America is because the term “freedom” in America is a very loose term and only applied to a selective few. If you look at the plight of black people from the time of slavery until now, we know that there has been a constant struggle and fight to call ourselves “free people”. If you throw in this new monster called “cancel culture” then you get the sense that this up hill road to freedom becomes steeper and steeper.

With cancel culture all someone has to do is be offended by your words, you’re content on a social media post or just be accused of something without any merit of guilt and you are done and kicked off the planet earth.

It’s really bad in politics, if you prefer one party over the other then you become an enemy just because you differ with them on how you vote. Just go on twitter or any other social media site, pick a side and you will see the response.

So what’s free? My point for writing this piece is because recently freedom restrictions was placed on me and my brother 50shadesofsolg (twitter handle).

For the past 6 months we had been doing a podcast called “Brown Paper Bag Podcast” and “Purple Pill Politix” (Politix intentionally spelled that way) on Youtube. We finally got to a point where we were monetized and on the verge of producing 2 other podcast to add to our portfolio and expand our brand on Youtube.

The Brown Paper Bag Podcast was a show to have constructive conversations with people from all walks of life about everyday issues that didn’t encompass politics. The Purple Pill Politix was a political podcast, however, we made it a point to not choose side politically, but to call out both side, fair and down the middle.

To put it in a nutshell we were all about positivity and information. We never spoke on things that would offend certain groups. We never put out misinformation. We intentionally produced wholesome content because we wanted our podcasts to be in a space that was different then the rest, we provided content that was refreshing and outside of the normal content that you find on Youtube.

After almost 3k subscribers, hundreds of thousands of views, on December 4 our channel was taken down by YouTube for a reason unbeknown to us other then Youtube saying we “violated their community terms and conditions”.

We were completely dumbfounded as to their reasoning for terminating our channel when we know we never did such a thing. We appealed the decision and lost. So I ask again, What’s Free? Defiantly not two positive black men having constructive conversations and bringing solutions to problems.

Youtube prefers content creators that dumb down the people or entertains young people, not that of intelligent minds that can inspire, educate and mobilize people to higher schools of thought. Understand nothing is free, and even on the appearance of freedom, there is a price to be paid and that price is control. …The Brown Paper Bag Podcast continues.