The Political Puerto Rican

 The short answer? No. The longer answer? Still no. In a similar move to YouTube’s previous ban on COVID related misinformation, the video streaming website has announced that they will be banning vaccine related misinformation on their platform. Unsurprisingly, critics came crying about the infringement on their freedoms. But must people be reminded about how the first amendment is only applicable to the  government infringing on your freedoms , which last I checked didn’t include YouTube. It will be interesting to see how this gets translated across other social media platforms but I think one thing we can all agree on is: misinformation is dangerous and it is not just up to individuals to combat it.  YouTube blocks all anti-vaccine content REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Pew Research Center In a recent report conducted and released by the FBI , according to their data, between 2019 and 2020 the United States experienced the greatest increase in violent crime rates in a single year span since 2015 to 2016. In this article from The New York Times, the author continued to reiterate that this was the sharpest increase from the 1990s, while in fact 2019-2020 only had less than one point more than the increase between 2015 and 2016 - this is violent crimes overall, not just murders. The Twitter thread included below outlines the incredible amount of journalistic malfeasance that occurred in this article. Even if I had not found this article via that Twitter thread I would still believe that this article should not have been published the way it was.  The first thing I noticed was how sources cited in the beginning of the article continuously held that there was not a list of factors to pinpoint that led to the increase but then as you keep reading another so

Well Texas certainly seems to think it does.  In a partisan vote last week, the Texas State Senate passed House Bill 20  in response to social media sites banning or censoring political speech and posts. This has come after former President Trump's well known Twitter and Facebook ban that followed his continued posting regarding election fraud. Proponents of this bill argued that social media sites have a clear partisan bias when it comes to censoring accounts.  However this claim can be difficult to prove due to these tech companies keeping their policies close to their chests. Nevertheless, the fact that this bill will eventually make it to the governor's desk just goes to show how far social media has come in pervading the political sphere. It is likely that this bill will share the same fate as a similar one passed by Florida that was struck down by the courts claiming First Amendment infringement , which is truly ironic considering proponents of these bills are also arguin

photo by Karly DeWees   The polarization of American politics is on the rise and it is happening alongside and via major media outlets. It is no secret that CNN and FoxNews tend to be on opposite sides of the political spectrum and as more and more consumers are drawn to their respective partisan outlets, the more partisan the outlets become. This is one of the many, and key ways, media has invaded the way they influence elections. While these pundits may not be outright telling their voters who to vote for, they are further reaffirming what their viewers come to these channels to see. On a similar vein, the increased accessibility to the news via quick and short social media platforms has brought the news to the fingertips of voters like never before. While the news is heavily filtered to the consumers preference, learning and forming opinions and knowledge of elections and the candidates is - seemingly - easier than it ever has been. Speaking from experience, it is much easier to gau