Opinion

Opinion: Silicon Valley tech giants like Facebook, Google now a direct threat to U.S. freedom, democracy

By now, pretty much everyone on the Internet knows that a number of Silicon Valley tech giants have banned and censored Alex Jones’ Infowars in a move that many believe was coordinated.  Not only has Jones been banned from posting links to social media outlets, companies like MailChimp are targeting his basic business operation, preventing him from sending emails to subscribers.

Not content with destroying and censoring Infowars, anti-free speech liberals are signaling their desire to do the same thing to Fox News and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Ct., has said there needs to be even more censorship.  All in the name of saving “democracy.”  If that sounds rather Orwellian, that’s because it is.

Despite all their ballyhoo about supporting free speech online, the fact is that Silicon Valley tech giants like Facebook, Google and Twitter are now a direct threat to freedom and democracy as we have known it for more than two centuries.

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

As we’ve documented here many times, Facebook — the site once called “the world’s most dangerous censor” by Breitbart — has repeatedly banned users and yanked pages for extremely questionable reasons, falsely claiming the content violates their nebulous “community standards.”  Meanwhile, other posts which clearly violate their standards have been allowed to stand.

Need proof?  Here you go, and this is just a tiny sampling:

Additionally, Facebook’s algorithms — ostensibly designed to combat so-called “fake news” — have significantly hurt conservative sites like this one while booting liberal propaganda outlets like CNN.

Worse yet, GOP candidates are finding themselves either banned outright or are having their advertising rejected for questionable reasons.

Here’s just a few examples we’ve documented here:

Everywhere we look, Silicon Valley tech companies are banning or censoring those whose views fall somewhere to the right of Josef Stalin.

Just recently, high-level Republicans were shadow-banned by Twitter while their far-left colleagues were left untouched.

Now, Facebook, Google, Twitter and other Silicon Valley companies seem poised to launch a Pearl Harbor-style assault on Trump supporters, libertarians and conservatives the likes of which we can’t even begin to imagine.

Once these companies are finished, only one point of view will be allowed online.  Anyone who holds a non-politically correct opinion will be banned, censored and unable to fund their operation.

Liberals, however, will be free to do or say whatever they want and will have free access to all the things we have — until now — come to take for granted.

This is not freedom.  It is tyranny, and it’s un-American.  Yet, Democrats — many of whom are funded by the very companies stealing our freedom and effectively meddling in our elections — are openly embracing the idea of Soviet-style censorship, all the while telling us it isn’t happening.

All of this was addressed in a 2016 book, “Banned: How Facebook Enables Militant Islamic Jihad,” written by yours truly and American-Israeli Adina Kutnicki.  In that book, Adina and I predicted that if the situation did not change significantly, the Internet as we knew it then would essentially cease to exist within five years.  We were right, but the damage only took a little over two years.  At the rate things are going, conservatives may not even be allowed to use the Internet without express written permission in five years.

It’s clear these companies will not stop the censorship and discrimination on their own.  As Allen West once noted, these companies are at war with conservatives.  Sure, they may give us lip service from time to time, but let’s be clear — they simply cannot be trusted anymore.  Remember when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told MRC’s Brent Bozell that Facebook would not deliberately target conservative sites?

In December 2016, Bozell said:

I have been in communication with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook since he announced their new ‘fake news’ initiative. I expressed grave concern with this decision and the liberal ‘fact-checking’ organizations Facebook has chosen. Mr. Zuckerberg assured me that his express aim is to eliminate only patently false news stories from Facebook. He underscored he has instructed these organizations to focus only on truly fake news and nothing of a political nature. I will accept in good faith his commitment to address our concerns on this matter. It is my hope this will be the last we say about this issue.

So what do we do?

The choices are rather limited.  We can spend thousands upon thousands of dollars in lawsuits, we can continue to lobby freedom-loving members of Congress and we can seek out alternative social media sites like Gab.ai, PatrioticSpace, Tea Party Community and ProAmerica Only.

We can also revert to operating as we did before social media companies like Facebook and Twitter took over the landscape, bookmarking individual sites and visiting them throughout the day.

We can protest these companies and publicly call them out for their discrimination, target them and their advertisers with boycotts or abandon them altogether and opt for other venues.

It’s not going to be an easy fight — protecting freedom never is.  But one thing is clear — if we don’t take concrete steps now, we can kiss our online freedom away for good.

As the old saying goes: Do something; Either lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.

Related:

If you haven’t checked out and liked our Facebook page, please go here and do so.  You can also follow us on Twitter at @co_firing_line.  Please be sure to check out our MeWe page here and check us out at ProAmerica Only here.

If you appreciate independent conservative reports like this, please go here and support us on Patreon and get your conservative pro-Trump gear here.

And while you’re at it, be sure to check out our friends at Whatfinger News, the Internet’s conservative front-page founded by ex-military!

 

Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

Related Articles

Our Privacy Policy has been updated to support the latest regulations.Click to learn more.×