The Orwellian Dystopia
The election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America was not supposed to happen. Apparently, the smartest individuals on the planet; journalists, economists, pollsters, late night TV hosts, and Silicon Valley soy boys did not recognize the boiling backlash from America’s forgotten people in their sophisticated data. After anxious tears and panic attacks, which continue today, these Marxists self-appointed lovers of freedom in Silicon Valley got to work to “fix” the mistake American people made at the ballot box. Breitbart senior technology correspondent Allum Bokhari’s phenomenal book, #Deleted: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal the Election, describes in gut-wrenching detail how Silicon Valley’s Big Tech morphed in less than two decades from defenders of free-speech to a monstrous Leviathan defying how free speech should be.
Many of us have suspected the leftist bias of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google, and Apple. But pointing out exact evidence on blatant shadow banning, demonetization or censorship of conservatives has not been on the agenda for Republicans and conservative think tanks at Capitol Hill. They have chosen to trade favorable legislations and research publications for campaign contributions and gifts from Silicon Valley. Luckily this insightful, shocking, and superbly documented book has catalogued with impressive precision the double-standards of Big Tech. It turns out that the promises made by the woke executives of Big Tech to remain objective and impartial in the contemporary era of political discourse are worthless and hypocritical lies. For example, when Google executives publicly announce that the 2016 election results were “offensive” and pledge to make the nationalist movement a “hiccup” in history, it is difficult to accept their crocodile tears when Google is caught in search engine manipulation that favors progressives in social media at the expense of conservatives. Big Tech in all their sincerity believe that they are the social conscience of our society and therefore, must use their monopoly of information to their advantage and flatter themselves as the enlightened social class.
Totalitarian Digi Nation State
It truly is astounding to witness the exact opposite of state sanctioned mind-control; today our opinions, fears, hopes and thoughts are not manipulated by some nefarious thought-police a la 1984. We are paradoxically controlled by the private sector with a toxic leftist agenda. As the author frequently argues in the book, leftists do not want information to be balanced. Their views must be dominant and unchallenged. Several chapters in the book discuss what happens when you dare to present inconvenient facts about Marxism America’s leftism in social media. Twitter will shadow ban your account without your knowledge. YouTube will demonetize your channel(s). Google will demote search results relating to you (unless the coverage is negative). Facebook can shut down traffic to your business profile without any due process. It appears that the modus operandi of Big Tech is to protect free speech with a caveat: free speech for progressives only. The rest of us may speak freely, but with certain filters to prevent “hate speech” and “bigotry.”
Today the thought police in Silicon Valley is obsessed with terms like “misinformation,” “abusive language,” “hate speech,” and “fake news.” The meaning of these unprincipled filler words can be stretched subjectively as far as the user chooses. For example, the author mentions instances where a conservative can cite objective data from a non-partisan source to present an alternative view in Twitter and get banned under the auspices of “hate speech.” Yet, left-wing activists with verified Twitter accounts can incite grotesque violence against high school students (see Covington Catholic HS) with a silent nod from Twitter’s “Good Censors”. But such disgusting hypocrisy is merely the beginning. Bokhari argues that Big Tech’s attempts to smear President Trump – by taking down over 300 pro-Trump related videos on YouTube – is certainly serious offense, but the actions of applying the silencing hammer and sickle to Conservative grass-roots activists poses an existential threat to liberty and democracy. Social media was – according to the Mainstream Media – such an inspiring tool when it was used under Obama administrator or during the Arab Spring. Somehow unregulated speech in social media became magically a socially destabilizing force when Donald J. Trump occupies the White House.
Algorithm’s Inefficiencies
Algorithms used by Big Tech inherit the biases of Big Tech programmers. The book emphasizes the fact that algorithms are like babies learning about reality, but the teachers of reality are all vainglorious leftists with an agenda. Consequently, the future of communication will be determined by a leftist AI deciding what qualifies as hate speech and bigotry. As of now it seems that conservatism, capitalism and freedom all qualify as unacceptable speech and ideas. What does all this mean? The list of banned conservative groups and individuals in social media platforms is exhaustingly long and it can only lead to one logical conclusion: at some point you’re next.
Sadly, the book does not offer much original ideas to change the status quo. Calling for more regulation of Big Tech is not taking the discussion in a meaningful direction. Politicians blabbering about the revoking of Section 230 during election year is nothing but empty grand-standing. The author also hopes that return the spirit of conserving traditions that have worked in the past would somehow change Big Tech’s behavior. We are left with two alternatives. Either delete your social media accounts (although your data is still owned and stored in Facebook’s servers) and live in the “real” world or use competitors such as DuckDuckGo, Minds, Gab, Dissenter, Parler, Sandstorm, Urbit, and many others. On a more practical level, to protect the legitimacy of American elections, conservatives especially cannot fight the war of manipulated communication with the tools that exacerbate the power of Big Tech. The book reminds that elections are won by getting your boots on and hitting the neighborhoods to knock doors, one at a time. You know the good ole’ fashion way of actually speaking to people.
It is time to delete Big Tech’s self-appointed “good censors” who have mistaken George Orwells’ 1984 for guidelines as opposed to a warning.
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- NRN+ Reader’s Club Book Review: The Quotable Joe by Katherine Rodriguez - December 19, 2020
- NRN+ Reader’s Club Virtual Meetup Oct. 26: #DELETED by Allum Bokhari - October 22, 2020
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