Big Tech is waging an overt battle to censor conservative opinions, and President Donald Trump has had enough. Addressing a select group of reporters, publishers, and activists at a White House “summit,” the president promised to target blatant social media censorship with legislative action, Fox News reports.
“We’re not going to be silenced,” Trump vowed.
Enough is enough!
“Today I am directing my administration to explore all regulatory and legislative solutions to protect free speech and the free speech rights of all Americans,” Trump said. “We hope to see transparency, more accountability, and more freedom.”
The president assured his audience that he would use regulatory oversight to keep tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Google from banning or shadowbanning users based upon their ideological views. According to a Hill.TV American Barometer poll published in December, 58% of registered voters believe that social media platforms are unfair to conservatives.
In this case, it’s hard to argue with the majority. Last month, YouTube demonetized conservative comedian Steven Crowder for taunting a gay rival. Pinterest was also exposed for removing the word “Christian” from its auto-fill search functions, and the image-sharing platform banned links to a pro-life website, labeling it “pornography.”
When investigative reporters from the watchdog group Project Veritas published reports exposing Pinterest’s bias, Twitter responded by banning the article for violating its rarely enforced “rules against posting private information.” Moreover, conspiracist Alex Jones, gay activist Milo Yiannopolous, actor James Woods, anti-Islamist reporter Laura Loomer, and other right-leaning personalities were banned from Facebook in May, prompting Trump to speak out against the social media platform.
“It’s getting worse and worse for Conservatives on social media!” Trump wrote at the time. He continued in another tweet: “This is the United States of America — and we have what’s known as FREEDOM OF SPEECH! We are monitoring and watching, closely!”
Building a coalition
Trump invited many of the victims of Big Tech’s censorship campaign to the White House for Thursday’s summit. “Some of you are extraordinary. The crap you think of is unbelievable,” Trump said.
The president also applauded Project Veritas President James O’Keefe, whose organization recently conducted an undercover investigation uncovering bias from Google. “Somebody said he’s controversial,” Trump said, eliciting laughter. “He’s truthful.”
O’Keefe’s reporters caught a senior Google executive on video admitting to purposefully burying conservative content to affect the results of the 2016 presidential race. The Google insider said that Google “is bent on never letting somebody like Donald Trump come to power again.”
Although conservatives tend to experience the lionshare of internet censorship, Trump made it clear that all unpopular voices should be protected — even those on the left. He insisted that it doesn’t matter “what side” you’re on, all individuals deserve equal access to electronic media.
PragerU chief marketing officer Craig Strazzeri was also present for the summit. The conservative outlet, which produces viral videos on political topics, has seen its content on Islam and the Second Amendment removed from Google.
“Big tech needs to be held accountable for their actions, and the general public needs to be aware of what’s going on,” Strazzeri said, according to the Daily Caller.
The president agreed. “Big tech must not censor the voices of the American people,” Trump said, thanking his supporters for attending the summit.
Dismissive Democrats
Trump’s critics, however, dismissed the summit as a political stunt. “This has the appearance not of a social media summit but a political rally and call for the right,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. Michael Beckerman, the president of a trade group representing Big Tech, agreed, saying:
This is largely, I think, a political event.”
However, the left was hysterical following revelations that Russian trolls used social media to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential race, even though their impact was minimal. “Far from being a sophisticated propaganda campaign, it was small, amateurish, and mostly unrelated to the 2016 election,” a report from The Nation concluded.
Indeed, the Russian Internet Research Agency that ran the influence operations spent a mere $73,711 on purchasing Facebook advertisements between 2015 and 2017. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton and Trump spent a combined $81 million on Facebook ads.
And yet, Democrats are dismissive of conservative concerns regarding social media bias. Fortunately, Trump will not be deterred.
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