Russell Brand: after it was revealed that a UK Parliament committee had written to his social media platforms, calling for his income to be cut off – despite the fact that he has not been convicted of any crime – it has emerged that governments seem to be regularly exerting pressure on social media platforms to stifle political commentary that conflicts with their views.

This has escalated quickly – after the Commons Culture, Media and Sports chair wrote to online platforms in a bid to take Russell Brand’s income away from him, her fellow Tories are now clamouring to have GB News taken off-air because of Laurence Fox.

The charge appears to have been led by former Sky News mainstay Adam Boulton:

But he was quickly joined – on the same episode of the BBC’s Newsnight – by Tory MP Caroline Nokes:

Some might say, “Sauce for the goose” – at least GB News is attracting the same opinions as Russell Brand.

But now let’s look at some other reactions to those calls for GB News to close. Here’s Tim Montgomerie, founder of the Conservative Home blog – and therefore also a Tory:

And now Nile Gardiner, former aide to Margaret Thatcher and therefore also a Tory:

So countries that shut down news networks are authoritarian and tyrants?

What does that say about the CMS committee chair, Tory Dame Caroline Dinenage, trying to shut down Russell Brand’s channel?

You might suggest that there’s a bit of a difference between a network and a one-man show, but then, we know Brand isn’t the only social media commentator facing shutdown – don’t we?

Is this acceptable?

Twitter/X keeps trying to take followers away from Peter Stefanovic. Is it because he’s a left-wing commentator who publishes facts that the right wing headbangers don’t want you to know?

If you don’t think so, you need to come up with a reasonable alternative explanation. What is it?

Apparently, this is an international phenomenon. I noticed in a piece on the Brand controversy, a YouTube-hosted show called The Comments Section suggested that its parent organisation, The Daily Wire, had faced calls for it to be de-platformed by the US government.

“Guys, this has been happening – this isn’t new,” said host Brett Cooper.

“Literally a month and a half ago, the Daily Wire found out that the US Government had been writing the Facebook specifically … saying ‘Is there anything you can do to, you know, limit their posts a bit during the election cycle – it’s really not great for us, could you limit them?’ Asking a social media site to censor our posts.

“This is happening; it’s all politicised.”

If you’re a regular follower of Vox Political you’ll know that This Site’s readership has mysteriously plummeted, so I tend to believe that Facebook certainly does have the ability to restrict the readership of particular users/pages.

If this is happening internationally, and to organisations with as much clout as the Daily Wire (it’s quite big, you know), then I think it might be time for us all to get together, pool our information and take it to such authorities as may exist to police such matters.

In the UK, I don’t even know if there is an organisation with a duty to ensure that businesses relying on social media exposure don’t get censored for no reason.

I’ll let you know what happens. While the allegations against Russell Brand are vile, it seems something useful may come from them.

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