Big Tech companies are growing massively rich and powerful while crushing free speech and manipulating the flow of information.
Visual Capitalist released its ranking in May of the top most valuable global brands in 2024. Six of the top ten brands are Big Tech companies, with Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon taking the top four spots respectively. And one thing all of these tech giants have in common is a record of consistently undermining and censoring free speech. It seems censorship is a lucrative business. Together, these anti-free speech tech giants are worth an ungodly $1.66 trillion in value collectively, which means they’re worth more than the GDP of at least 164 individual countries.
The first four of the top five most valuable brands, according to Visual Capitalist, are, in order: Apple ($516.6 billion), Microsoft ($340.4 billion), Google (333.4 billion) and Amazon ($308.9 billion).
And while not the most valuable brand overall, Google is perhaps the most egregious offender when it comes to targeting free speech, especially election-related speech. Multiple MRC Free Speech America studies have illustrated the extent to which Google has manipulated its search algorithm to censor political candidates it doesn’t like while elevating the radical leftist ones it has supported, such as President Joe Biden. Indeed, MRC uncovered how Google has interfered in elections a whopping 41 times since 2008.
But Google is not alone in censoring Americans’ speech. Amazon, Microsoft and Apple have also targeted free speech for censorship, as MRC’s unique CensorTrack database shows. For instance, Microsoft Bing censored information about the Chinese Communist government’s Uyghur genocide in China.
Amazon, meanwhile, among other actions, has censored right-leaning books. These include Matt Walsh’s anti-transgender books What Is a Woman and Johnny the Walrus, and Paul Sperry’s Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington. Apple and Google both banned free speech app Parler from their app stores in 2021. Apple also censored and then restored The Glenn Beck program in 2023 without explanation.
But other tech giants have also profited while attacking free speech online. Expanding to the top ten most valuable brands shows communist Chinese government-tied TikTok ($84.2 billion) at number seven, and Meta’s Facebook ($75.7 billion) at number eight.
Facebook is among the worst Big Tech censors, as MRC Free Speech America has repeatedly demonstrated through its research. Not much unlike Google, Facebook has also done its fair share of election-interfering censorship. The Meta platform interfered in U.S. elections 39 times since 2008, according to recent MRC Free Speech America research.
TikTok has also been a source of contention and censorship in the U.S. The communist Chinese government-tied platform openly bragged about its censorship and targeting content to please the Chinese government. As of Feb. 2022, TikTok had censored MRC 18 times, 15 times in two months. By September of that year, TikTok had “permanently banned” 11 pro-free speech organizations. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains a board seat and owns a financial stake in TikTok’s parent company ByteDance.
It’s safe to say that censorship has officially become one of the biggest profit-generating industries around the globe.
MRC Free Speech America associate editor Joseph Vazquez contributed to this report.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using MRC Free Speech America’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
