Big Tech decides who can disseminate news
Doing the bidding of the government may be a necessary cost of remaining a Mega-corporation, but it corrodes America’s democratic ideals.
Big Tech companies like Twitter, Google, Apple, and Facebook worked with the US government to censor voices and suppress information in a way that helped Joe Biden win the White House.
These mega-companies are collectively worth about $4 trillion. Google controls 90 percent of all Internet searches and over half the world’s smartphones are Apple-branded. Facebook claims to have nearly 3 billion monthly users, almost half the world’s population. Along with Amazon and Twitter, these mega-corporations decide who can disseminate the news and how. And doing the government’s bidding may be a necessary cost of staying in business and remaining the size they are.
Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook censored information related to Hunter Biden’s laptop. Its engineers played down the story on the site’s “ranking and newsfeed” features, so “fewer people saw it than would have otherwise,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. The story, in any case, was disbelieved by most mainstream media organizations, and came out (but was widely ignored) one week before the election. New owner Elon Musk also said that Twitter interfered in the election. Former CEO Jack Dorsey said that bans by social media companies on Trump were emboldened by each other’s actions. The precedent set “will be destructive to the noble purpose and ideals of the open internet.”
“Having to take these actions fragment the public conversation,” Dorsey said on Twitter, “They divide us. They limit the potential for clarification, redemption, and learning. And sets a precedent I feel is dangerous: the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation.”
The censoring and suppression of newsworthy stories in the run-up to a presidential election meant that Facebook and Twitter deliberately interfered in the election to keep Trump out of the White House.
Doing the bidding of the government may be a necessary cost of remaining a Mega-corporation, but it corrodes America’s democratic ideals. Acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech is a 1st amendment violation.
If Big Tech companies such as Apple help autocratic countries to control their citizens, why should they be troubled by subtle but no less insidious efforts to control ours?