Google search has blacklisted numerous major conservative websites by removing them from results in what appears to be a major new censorship purge.
Breitbart, the Daily Caller, Infowars, Human Events and Red State are all missing when a user searches directly for those websites on Google.com.
Election Day is less than six months away, and Democrats are scrambling to patch the digital deficits of their presumptive nominee. And behind the scenes, Silicon Valley’s billionaire Democrats are spending tens of millions of dollars on their own sweeping plans to catch up to President Donald Trump’s lead on digital campaigning — plans that are poised to make them some of the country’s most influential people when it comes to shaping the November results.
To begin with, there is a profound and growing lack of privacy online. Cambridge Analytica was able to use a quiz app to harvest the data of users and their Facebook friends without them knowing. If social media companies such as Facebook cannot prevent these occurrences from happening, then the right to privacy online is nonexistent. The second way social media negatively affects American life is that it has degraded the news cycle.
The Chinese government is already censoring what gets out about the Wuhan virus.
Now, social media titans in the U.S. think they know what’s best for Americans and want to make sure they receive the “right” information.
Youtube announced this week that it will begin removing election-related videos that are “manipulated or doctored” with the aim of influencing voters.
The move is part of an effort by the Google owned company to be a “more reliable source” for news and to promote a “healthy political discourse”.
The director of the Trump 2020 campaign criticized Google’s new advertising policy for considering that it was specially designed to prevent the re-election of the president.
An investigation by CBS News’ “60 Minutes” found that “over 300 video ads were taken down by Google and YouTube, mostly over the summer, for violating company policy.”
The story Fyk is telling, in this case, goes beyond the question of whether Facebook is a publisher or a platform, which has been the subject of a lot of talk lately. The argument Fyk is making is that Facebook acted as a “Developer of information,” thus making Facebook an “internet content provider” by legal definition under Section 230(f)(3), and that Facebook is pretty much competing with its own users and there is zero legal immunity for that.
The argument of publisher vs platform is a publisher can be held liable for things published on their site, while a platform gets immunity.
On Sunday Right Side Broadcasting Network announced that after 300 million+ views of PresidentTrump rallies and four years of following the rules on YouTube, their live-streaming ability was taken away with no explanation.
Just what are some of the methods that tech giants like Google and Facebook can use to shift their users’ attitudes, beliefs, and even votes?
How do search engine rankings impact undecided voters?
How powerful of an impact can search engine algorithms have on our perceptions and actions, without us even knowing?
