New York Times on Social Media Censorship: “Conservatives are zeroing in on a new enemy in the political culture wars: Big Tech.”

This New York Times article touches upon the free speech panel I developed at CPAC, and which CPAC then stole and hijacked from me. It treats the social media suppression of dissenting views as if it were something in our imagination, or that we’re just using to raise funds:

“Conservatives are zeroing in on a new enemy in the political culture wars: Big Tech. Arguing that Silicon Valley is stifling their speech and suppressing right-wing content, publishers and provocateurs on the right are eyeing a public-relations battle against online giants like Google and Facebook, the same platforms they once relied on to build a national movement.”

Let’s see how the New York Times would fare if it were blocked on Facebook, scrubbed from Google, and shadowbanned from Twitter. Dogs licking the boots of their masters.

“New Foils for the Right: Google and Facebook,” by Michael M. Grynbaum and John Herrmann, New York Times, March 6, 2018:

Conservatives are zeroing in on a new enemy in the political culture wars: Big Tech.

Arguing that Silicon Valley is stifling their speech and suppressing right-wing content, publishers and provocateurs on the right are eyeing a public-relations battle against online giants like Google and Facebook, the same platforms they once relied on to build a national movement.

In a sign of escalation, Peter Schweizer, a right-wing journalist known for his investigations into Hillary Clinton, plans to release a new film focusing on technology companies and their role in filtering the news.

Tentatively titled “The Creepy Line,” Mr. Schweizer’s documentary is expected to have its first screening in May in Cannes, France — during the Cannes Film Festival, but not as part of the official competition. He used the same rollout two years ago for his previous film, an adaptation of his book “Clinton Cash” that he produced with Stephen K. Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News.

“The Creepy Line” alludes to an infamous 2010 speech by Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google at the time, who dismissed concerns about privacy by declaring that his company’s policy was “to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”

The documentary, which has not been previously reported, dovetails with concerns raised in recent weeks by right-wing groups about censorship on digital media — a new front in a rapidly evolving culture war.

If the mainstream media is a perennial enemy of the right, Big Tech is a fresh and novel foe, arguably more relevant to 2018. Facebook, Google and their ilk are facing tough questions about their inability to police the content they distribute, including Russian propaganda during the 2016 presidential campaign. The companies have also been accused by lawmakers, critics and activists of monopolistic tendencies and manipulative product design.

The critique from conservatives, in contrast, casts the big tech companies as censorious and oppressive, all too eager to stifle right-wing content in an effort to mollify liberal critics.

“This could end up being the free speech issue of our time,” said Alex Marlow, editor in chief of Breitbart News, which has published articles accusing Google and Facebook of, among other sins, political bias. “The Silicon Valley elites are saying: ‘We don’t care what you want to see — we know what you should see. We know better.’”

Big Tech is easily associated with West Coast liberalism and Democratic politics, making it a fertile target for the right. And operational opacity at Facebook, Google and Twitter, which are reluctant to reveal details about their algorithms and internal policies, can leave them vulnerable, too.

“It’s the perfect foil,” said Eli Pariser, a former executive director of the liberal activist group MoveOn.org and the author of “The Filter Bubble,” a book about how consumers find information online. “There’s not even a real basis to establish objective research about what’s happening on Facebook, because it’s closed.”

Google, Facebook and Twitter loomed large at last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md., where dozens of guests squeezed into a standing-room-only ballroom for a discussion called “Suppression of Conservative Views on Social Media: A First Amendment Issue.”

Among the panelists were James O’Keefe, the guerrilla filmmaker who has tried to undermine news outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, and James Damore, an engineer fired by Google after he circulated a memo arguing that biological differences accounted for the low number of women in engineering.

Mr. Damore — a new celebrity in the right-wing world, who, in an interview, said of his first foray to CPAC, “There’s definitely a lot of people that want to take selfies” — described a culture of dogmatic liberalism at Google.

“There are political activists in all of these companies that want to actively push a liberal agenda,” he said. “Why does it matter? Because these companies are so ubiquitous and powerful that they are controlling all the means of mass communication.”

Before Mr. Damore spoke, organizers distributed baseball caps to guests emblazoned with an illustration of Twitter’s bird logo, upside-down and with its eyes crossed out.

The panelists accused social media platforms of delisting their videos or stripping them of advertising. Such charges have long been staples of far-right online discourse, especially among YouTubers, but Mr. Schweizer’s project is poised to bring such arguments to a new — and potentially larger — audience….

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Mahou Shoujo

6 years ago

The new york times, “yesterday’s news, unfit to print”

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Achmed Mohammedan

6 years ago

Reply to  Mahou Shoujo

More like yesterday’s lies … And, lies from today.

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Suresh

6 years ago

NY Slimes tries to pull a taqiya. Its Big Tech that has been taken over by Left/Liberals who are shutting down conservatives and they have right to fightback

America’s First Muslim President , Obama also pulled a Taqiya for many years justifying bringing in “refugees” . what Dems and corrupt media would not tell you that 98% of these “refugees” were muslims !

And christians , yazidis who were the real refugees were denied !

Dems including Obama have not only denied refugees status to christians from middle east who are real refugee but even have deported christians back to ISIS territory to be slaughtered by ISIS http://tinyurl.com/mtc3xch

Not one MSM media covered it !

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Dennis

6 years ago

In these times when the liberal media and the ultra left are fixed on “Russian Collusion,” in their attempt to oust Trump, when no evidence exists that relate to that actually happening, and with the so-called pundits claiming that even if foreign governments wanted to influence our elections they did not exceed, it should be clear to the American public that underlining this article is the quest by the left and Big Tech to nullify Trump and all of us who will speak out against what we see as policies that are founded solely on the continuing quest to retain power and control over the people, amounting to conduct that is wholesale greed and fraud. In the 2016 elections the American voter used their own ability to come to the conclusion that Clinton was not good for this country. Trump has been speaking his views for many years, and his views are the views of a man who sees the need for change in how we govern, and he not only stated what he thought needed to be done, but, in fact, has actually turned many leaders heads by doing or trying to do what he thought is best for the American people. I commend the man, and hope he continues to set a new standard of what the people expect from our leaders, especially our President. The left cannot accept that and this is one of their attempts to fight back, since they believe their power and control is potentially in jeopardy. The American people will see thru the rubbish being generated by the left, and hopefully this attempt at denying free speech to those of us who can see thru the opinionated and wrongfully controlled media, will see to a landslide victory in November for those who are willing to stand up against these liberals and support the efforts of this new leader, Donald Trump, is prepared to do everything that he believes is right for the American public, and not the personal power, greed and control that this nation has come to realize is wrongly motivated by the left. Trump has become the “Winston Churchill” of the America’s. Let us hope that he too can keep up the good work.

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Ichabod Crain

6 years ago

Reply to  Dennis

Comparing Trump to Winston Churchill is a bit over the top, but I liked much of what you had to say.

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InfidelCrusader

6 years ago

There is nothing new about this. The leftist bent of “Big Tech” has been known for quite some time and has been pointed out by the the conservative right for just as long.

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