Mexico’s President: Can’t You See How Furious the Statue of Liberty Is about Corporate Censorship?

Jan. 13 , 2021 (EIRNS)—President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced today in his morning press conference that he will launch a national discussion in Mexico over what steps must be taken to prevent big private social media corporations like Twitter, Facebook and the others, from taking away people’s right to freedom of information, and from collecting data on everything people do. Other nations will do the same, he forecast, as he urged everyone, from governments to human rights organizations, to speak out and take action.

We must “guarantee the right to information,” he stated, quite emphatically. “It cannot be allowed, I repeat, that a private company establish itself as the world censorship institution, like the Holy Inquisition of our day, over social media. That cannot be accepted; it cannot be permitted, because this goes against freedom....

“I don’t know if you have observed that, since [Twitter and Facebook] took those decisions, the Statue of Liberty in New York is turning red with anger, because it does not want to be turned into an empty symbol.... Freedom is even the first amendment of the United States Constitution.”

We must also discuss the invasion of our privacy by these private corporations, President López Obrador stated.

“How is it possible that a private company will know everything that we human beings are doing? Our tastes; what we do in public and what we do in private; our family discussions, discussions with our friends. Who is going to regulate this? Who controls it? What are the regulations? Where are Nation States? The United Nations? Where are the human rights defense organizations?...

“If someone has a telephone and then they hear that we want to buy a pair of shoes, ‘shoe sales’ appear on your screen. It would be very good for us to invite a specialist on this one of these days, because most people do not know that telephones are microphones. Why hide that? Why not say it? Let it be known. And if this is allowed, if it is legal, if it is moral, if it is not something which violates freedom.

“These are good subjects to reflect on, to discuss.... We in Mexico are going to pay attention to this matter.... In Mexico we want the freedoms to be guaranteed. Zero censorship.... And I think that this is also going to be reviewed in other countries, also.”