The left have moved beyond simply censoring conservatives on Big Tech platforms. Now Big Tech leaders like Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker are calling for conservatives to be financially crippled.
“[U]se of the internet to foment violence and hate, and reinforce white supremacy is about more than any one personality,” Baker wrote in a Jan 8 blog after sitting President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter. “Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms,” she proposed, along with a series of concrete demands for platforms going forward:
Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted.
Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact.
Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation.
Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things.
While the call to ban “disinformation” can so easily lead to censoring facts the left does not like, the call to “reveal who is paying for advertisements” has dystopian potential as well. Targeting advertisers in particular is a dire escalation, reflecting the shift from merely censoring conservatives to coming after their advertisers and their ability to advertise.
Using social media algorithms in order to reach new audiences is one of the few ways conservatives have actually been able to recruit younger audiences, a tried and true tactic which has enraged far-left academics.
Mozilla has a history of increasingly liberal leadership. Mozilla co-founder and then-CEO Brendan Eich was forced to resign in 2014 because he had given $1,000 to those who supported the California Proposition 8 ballot measure prohibiting same-sex marriage years earlier.
Even after conservatives have built their own platforms to avoid censorship, liberals have inevitably found other ways to undermine conservatives’ ability to express themselves online.
Parler CEO John Matze was featured in an interview on Fox News where he condemned Silicon Valley tech companies for blocking the Parler app from popular smartphones and preventing the site from even being hosted online. “They’ve made an attempt to not only kill the app but to actually destroy the entire company. And it’s not just these three companies. Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your local representative and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
