In an interesting turn of events, MAGA is now in favor of the government pressuring Big Tech platforms to censor users’ speech.
On Tuesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi revealed that the Department of Justice got Facebook to remove a group page where users shared information about Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the Chicago area.
“Today following outreach from [the Justice Department], Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target [ICE] agents in Chicago,” Bondi announced on X Tuesday.
The attorney general, without evidence, attributed a “wave of violence against ICE” to “online apps and social media campaigns designed to put ICE officers at risk just for doing their jobs.” She vowed to continue “engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement.”
The Trump administration has lately accused those who videotape ICE agents in public, or share public information about ICE actions, of illegal “doxing”—despite legal experts and court rulings affirming that the First Amendment covers such activities.
As Ari Cohn of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said in response to Bondi, “Discussion of where ICE has been spotted operating, and even the identities of agents, is protected by the First Amendment.”
The removed Facebook group appears to be a page titled “ICE Sightings—Chicagoland,” which, ABC7 Chicago reports, had amassed over 90,000 followers prior to its removal.
The page had recently drawn the ire of MAGA provocateur Laura Loomer. Two days before Bondi’s announcement, Loomer accused Mark Zuckerberg, who controls Facebook, of “leftist subversion of Trump and his policies” for keeping the page, and others like it, online.
“Perhaps Zuck needs to be contacted by the DOJ as well since he has no regard for the life of [ICE] agents,” Loomer wrote on X. It seems like Bondi followed through, and Zuckerberg—despite his purported embrace of free expression just prior to Donald Trump’s inauguration—caved and censored speech at the government’s behest.
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