The social media platform told The Epoch Times that the locking was done “in error’
Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is criticizing social media platform LinkedIn for allegedly interfering with a presidential election as it locked his account over comments he made about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Biden administration, and climate change.
“If they can do it to me, they can do it to anyone. It’s remarkable that expressing fact-based views on climate policy and China-related policy, including legitimate criticism of President Biden, would result in outright censorship by a Microsoft-owned social media company,” Ramaswamy, who announced his candidacy on Feb. 16, wrote in a statement to The Epoch Times on Thursday.
“Big Tech election interference has begun,” Ramaswamy said in a Twitter post on the same day.
LinkedIn last week denied Ramaswamy access to his account for comments that the social media platform says violates its User Agreement and Professional Community Policies, according to a screenshot of the company’s notice sent in an email to Ramaswamy.
The comments in question, according to the same screenshot, include a Feb. 5 statement by Ramaswamy: “The CCP is playing the Biden administration like a Chinese mandolin. China has weaponized the ‘woke pandemic’ to stay one step ahead of us. And it’s working.”
Another comment, dated Feb. 16, reads: “If the climate religion was really about climate change, then they’d be worried about, say, shifting oil production from the U.S. to places like Russia and China. Yet, the climate religion and its apostles in the ESG movement have a different objective.”
A third comment, dated May 7, 2023, says, “The climate agenda is a lie: fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity.”
Ramaswamy made all three comments in videos posted on the platform.
LinkedIn’s action repeats a pattern of behavior shared by technological corporations that critics say amounts to censorship of alternative views. The platform wrote in an email to Ramaswamy on Thursday informing the presidential candidate that it does not “tolerate misinformation, hate speech, violence, or any form of abuse on our platform.”
By Gary Bai
