A high school principal has been relieved of his duties — at least temporarily — after he criticized social media censorship to students this week.
Principal Barton Thorne, who leads Cordova High School in Tennessee’s Shelby County Schools “was critical of the riots at the Capitol,” WREG reported, but “he objected to actions taken by several social media platforms.”
“It’s what’s going on with Twitter and Facebook and Google and Apple, and their decision as private companies to filter and to decide what you, you hear and know about,” Thorne told students in a recording which the news station did not air.
Thorne reportedly did not make the comments in defense of President Donald Trump, but rather free speech.
“That was ignorance at the highest level,” he said of the riot. “I don’t know of too many people that are going to be okay with what happened. I don’t care what side you agree with, we don’t practice sedition, we don’t attack our legislature.”
Free speech was being threatened, he alleged, by the actions of privately held social media and tech companies — such as regulating users and applications — being made without oversight of a publicly elected body. …
In his comments to the school Monday, Thorne told students that “a marketplace of free exchange of ideas” was at stake, and that students should be concerned that there is not elected accountability for the social media and tech platforms and only financial power from users. The lack of accountability “should be very chilling for you, that should be … (Read more)
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