Last year, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson predicted that “Silicon Valley is never going to let 2016 happen again.” He was referring to Donald Trump’s social-media-enabled surprise victory — at least to the political establishment and pollsters — over Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. Parenthetically, a similar unexpected result has apparently just played out in the Australian national elections.
Forget fringe actors. The Big Tech platforms have seemingly engaged in a pattern of social media suspensions, de-platforming, shadow banning, throttling, and de-monetization all directed at well known and lesser known legitimate, peaceful Trump supporters and right-leaning content producers.
The Complaint Department
Against this backdrop, the White House has launched an initiative to gather information from those who believe they have been subjected to online political bias.
The announcement on the White House website reads as follows:
“SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS should advance FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Yet too many Americans have seen their accounts suspended, banned, or fraudulently reported for unclear ‘violations’ of user policies. No matter your views, if you suspect political bias caused such an action to be taken against you, share your story with President Trump.”
Related stories:
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‘Big Tech Censorship Is Election Meddling and a Civil Rights Violation’
‘Censorship Draped In the Soothing Banality of HR Department Cliches’
Free Speech Suppression
Gateway Pundit offers a disturbing assessment of ongoing tech bias:
“In February of 2018 Facebook launched a new algorithm to ensure that conservative news would not spread on their social media platform. The algorithm change caused President Donald Trump’s engagement on Facebook posts to plummet a whopping 45%… Top conservative Facebook pages with daily traffic in the millions have seen 75% to 95% drop in traffic since the 2016 election….Facebook has been shutting down traffic to conservative websites since the 2016 election.”
In a study of 50 online publishers released in March 2018, The Western Journal explained that modifications to Facebook’s news feeds adversely affected conservative publishers’ market share significantly more than liberals. The Outline came up with similar data after Facebook adjusted its news feeds to supposedly de-emphasize content from news outlets. And a study published in Quillette this past February concluded that Twitter treats conservatives more harshly than liberals when it comes to suspensions.
It’s worth noting again that Big Tech seldom, if ever, takes action against leftists no matter how abusive or threatening their online behavior becomes. Moreover, “accidental” suspensions that prompt apologies from theses platforms almost never occur to left-wing social media users.
Election Meddling
In a recent interview with Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report, author and filmmaker Mike Cernovich asserted that Big Tech is purposely going after “pro-Trump influencers who have cultural cachet” and who can thus generate votes for Trump in 2020.
He added that Silicon Valley has stepped up this effort to get rid of Trump supporters now rather than closer to the election “before it gets too hot to handle.”
Some head-in-the-sand conservatives, a.k.a. self-servatives, claim that Big Tech can do whatever it wants in a capitalist economy. Writing in Human Events, Walter Smith begs to differ: “..’free market’ absolutists refuse to acknowledge the powerful forces at work that deny free speech-focused social media competitors access to a level playing field.”
Will Justice Be Served on These Servers?
Trump himself has expressed concern on his Twitter feed about censorship of conservatives. Gathering data is fine, but what concrete actions should the Trump administration take (or should have already taken) to address tech bias and attacks on freedom of speech?
Smith of Human Events outlines three steps that President Trump should implement immediately to tackle the monopolistic Silicon Valley Cartel which is pushing social justice on social media:
“Trump should issue an executive order directing all federal government agencies to refuse to consider contracts with Big Tech firms (or their subsidiaries) that are engaging in politically biased censorship. He should also direct the agencies to, where possible, cancel existing contracts….
“The President should issue an executive order directing the DOJ & FCC to investigate whether Big Tech firms have violated anti-trust regulations.
“Trump could also order an investigation into whether Big Tech executives have perjured themselves or otherwise given false statements to Congress. These executives have repeatedly insisted in testimony before Congress that political bias informs neither their corporate policies nor their enforcement decisions.”
Cernovich and many others have also called for Congress to abolish Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This statute currently shields Big Tech networks from legal liability on the grounds that they are platforms rather publishers. Others have advocated regulating the platforms along the lines of public utility oversight. Plus, rampant privacy violations by these organizations should prompt additional legal penalties.
But wait, there’s more: “Facebook maintains a list of ‘hate agents’ for monitoring and potential termination, according to a source inside the company. Among the names reportedly on the ‘hate agent’ list? Star pundit and black conservative activist Candace Owens,” Breitbart reported yesterday.
Check back for updates.
[Featured image credit: Gerd Altmann/Pixabay]
