The social media giants’ suppression of voices that dissent from the far-Left line is abundantly documented. Jihad Watch is blocked from most Facebook newsfeeds, such that referrals from Facebook have been down 90% for the last year from their previous levels. My videos have not just been demonitized on YouTube; they never were offered ads. I am shadowbanned on Twitter and crowded out in Google searches by Islamic apologetics and dawah. Nor is my experience singular; many, many others have suffered the same, or worse.
But for the New York Times, the story is not the actual suppression of conservative views by Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc., for which there is abundant evidence. No, for the Times, the story here is that conservatives are “zeroing in on a new enemy.” Note that the Times here discusses the panel that CPAC hijacked and stole from Pamela Geller, without discussing its provenance.
“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….
WorkingClassPost says
Social media is probably toast already, and hardly worth worrying about, in the sense of being able to reverse it’s downward trajectory.
Of more concern to me, is the way otherwise open and frank ‘political’ websites are quietly removing posts and comments that are both factual and relevant, when they reference islam or sharia in a negative way.
Terry Gain says
Thank you for this Post, Mr Spencer.
Censorship of conservative opinion is a serious attack on Constitutional Rights.
Disqus blocks my comments critical of Islam by putting up banners that say:
IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’VE ALREADY SAID THAT (which is untrue)
and
OOPS, SOMETHING WENT WRONG. CHECK YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION ( another Disqus lie)
I work around the censorship but spelling Islam as Isl*m but it is very annoying that sites such as FPM, PJ MEDIA, DAILY CALLER and DAILY WIRE all use Disqus, as if there is no alternative. It is beyond me why they are feeding the enemy.
I note that the NYT makes no attempt to determine whether the complaints of censorship are true and that these authors use the term far right and right to describe conservatives, but refer to the Left and Far Left as liberals and Democrats.
CE says
I honestly do not have a lot of optimism for the future of free speech in western democracies. As we have all seen, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are all actively censoring any and all criticism of Islam and of Mohammad. I would agree with them
that threats against Muslims, just because they are Muslims, should be censored. I might even agree that the name calling of individuals or groups of people – “moron”, “idiot”, “brain-dead” – possibly should be blocked.
But then at the very least shouldn’t we also allowed to openly discuss on these same venues without ANY censorship, the irony and hypocrisy of blocking such criticisms when it is against a so-called “religion’ that very plainly orders that it’s followers “fight them until they all attest that there is no God but Allah…” (9:29) and calls anyone who disagrees with it “apes” (7:166), “pigs” (5:60), “dumb” (2:171), “scum” (13:17) and dozens and dozens of other hate filled invectives and instructions to fight and kill all non-believers.
The real irony of all this is that as much as we sometimes want to label those who follow such a doctrine as being morons and idiots, the real people worthy of such names are those in positions of authority at media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube who so stupidity believe that they are somehow demonstrating a measure of justice and fairness by enacting such speech killing policies.
Gerold says
@CE – Well said!
Raja says
CE, You have stated what we face every day in our lives. Islam is in constant war with the unbelievers of Islam and the world has to wake up to this reality ( and hopefully eradicate this evil and hate-filled ideology).
dhans says
I am really leery of any censorship at all, simply because I can’t trust anyone to be the least bit fair about it. I would not even trust myself to be in charge of censoring content. Now if someone chooses to act because of an explicit threat, then I am in favor of prosecuting the individual that did the attack to the extent that it violates the law. Words are just typed thoughts and have no real power of their own. They are simply hot air escaping the lungs, and their effect is only that which the recipient allows them to have. Actions on the other hand do have power. A better approach is to punish illegal actions. Even that is problematic because if you recall from history, it was perfectly legal to attack Jews and send them to the gas chamber in Germany in the 1940’s, so even man made law is no safeguard.
This is why religion and religious law is so important to a society, because it espouses a defined set of values that supersedes man. made law. In lieu of than that, the law is simply the rule of the democratic mob. The American Constitution goes a long way toward addressing this issue by defining God given rights in our society, which makes any violation of the Constitution very problematic. Don’t make the Fascists job any easier by an incremental dismantlement of your God given rights.
David says
Please when you refer to the New York Times, always mention how they covered up the famine in Ukraine in the 1930s.
dsinc says
Walter Duranty’s New York Times.
Billy Chickens says
What about liberals such as those at Queens University when Dr Jordan Peterson recently spoke about free speech. The liberal SJWs chanted: “Lock them in and burn them up!”
Highly reminiscent of the French Revolution, but I wonder if the liberals know (probably not since they don’t know history) that all of the leaders of the FR themselves were later beheaded at the guillotine.
dhans says
Or if they are aware of the “useful idiots” of the Russian revolution who were the first to the Gulags.
mortimer says
The NYT is a DESPICABLE SELL-OUT TO THE TOTALITARIANS.
I read this with disgust: “James O’Keefe, the guerrilla filmmaker”.
James O’Keefe is an INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST investigating NYT and other TOTALITARIAN FELLOW-TRAVELLERS.
O’Keefe is doing what NYT stopped doing… going after HYPOCRISY, GREED and DECEIT in high places.
THE NYT IS TOTALLY CORRUPT and now has become INACCURATE AND UNRELIABLE.
mortimer says
The NYT has taken the SIDE of the most MISOGYNISTIC, most BIGOTED, most FASCIST and most VICIOUS ideology today… the JIHAD IDEOLOGY.
By DEFENDING JIHAD, the NYT is SILENCING THE VOICE of THE OPPRESSED.
No Muzzies Here says
One part of the media establishment is protecting another part, and allowing it to violate the First Amendment.
MFritz says
N.Y.T. -> L.I.A.R.S.
Lydia Church says
“Conservatives are zeroing in on a new enemy in the political culture wars: Big Tech.”???
Uh, nope, they have that a _ _ – backwards!
It’s:
Big Tech is zeroing in on a new enemy in the political culture wars: Conservatives!
Only, it’s not really a new thing, it’s just a getting bigger thing.
It is so obvious that it is ridiculous for them to even try to lie about it.
But it is in their nature to say the opposite of whatever the truth actually is!
Politicianophobia says
Justine Trudeau keeps stating publicly the Kirsty Duncan, his Science Minister, is a Nobel Prize winning scientist, she is NOT. Maybe CBC will cover this story 24 7 . Headline can be Prime Justine Trudeau is a Liar.
Politicianophobia says
and the next headline can be:
Why Did Science Minister Not Tell The Truth?
LeftisruiningCanada says
that’s pretty tricksy isn’t it precious.