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Google ‘Interfered’ in U.S. Elections over 40 Times Since 2008

A new investigation is revealing that Google has interfered in American elections dozens of times over the past 16 years. According to a Media Research Center (MRC) Special Report compiled by MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider and Assistant Editor Gabriela Pariseau, Google has “interfered in elections” at least 41 times since 2008. “In every case, Google harmed the candidates — regardless of party — who threatened its left-wing candidate of choice,” the report states. “From the mouths of Google executives, the tech giant let slip what was never meant to be made public: That Google uses its ‘great strength and resources and reach’ to advance its leftist values.”

The MRC report notes that, in 2008, Google favored then-senator Barack Obama and his presidential bid, resulting in the tech giant censoring support for Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential candidate and “suspending the accounts of writers who wrote blogs critical of Obama during his primary race against Clinton.” Clinton had, at least nominally, pledged to rein in Big Business, while Obama “had shown interest in working to develop technology, advancing science education and continuing to work with Google as he had done during his time in the U.S. Senate.” Thus, Google censored pro-Clinton and anti-Obama blog posts online. Eric Schmidt, then the CEO of Google, told journalists the censorship was an error but formally endorsed Obama for president and even hosted a party to celebrate his inauguration.

Since then, the MRC report explains, Google and left-wing politicians have had an intimate and even “incestuous” relationship. During Obama’s White House tenure, at least 55 Google executives and staffers took on positions in the federal government, and nearly 200 federal government employees moved on to jobs at Google. “Ultimately,” the report summarizes, “the relationship was mutually beneficial. Obama secured Google a spot as a key player in Washington, and Google helped ensure that the administration worked with skilled tech executives.” Google also worked to support Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and target Republican presidential primary contenders.

In 2016, Google’s election manipulation kicked into high gear. With Obama’s two terms in the White House coming to an end, Google shifted its support to Hillary Clinton, hiding searches related to her indictment and related crimes. While Yahoo! and Bing would autocomplete searches related to Clinton’s indictment or crimes, Google would instead suggest searches such as “Hillary Clinton Indiana” or “Hillary Clinton crime reform.” Once Clinton squared off against then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Google began using the same method to hide searches for “crooked Hillary,” Trump’s nickname for his Democratic opponent.

Google also overrepresented search results with a left-wing bias. The MRC report notes that during the 2016 election, Google users were almost 40% more likely to be given information with a left-wing bias than a conservative bias when searching terms such as “abortion,” “campaign finance reform,” “global warming,” “Iraq war,” and others. Quoting research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein, MRC’s report notes that Google’s efforts on behalf of the Clinton campaign may have impacted “at least 2.5 million votes” in her favor.

Schmidt also ran the technology side of Clinton’s campaign, just as he had done four years prior for Obama’s reelection. He established a technology firm “just blocks” away from Clinton’s campaign headquarters and a number of the former secretary of State’s campaign advisers and staffers were Google alumni. Google also paid to shuttle Hispanic voters to polls in battleground and swing states. Email chains revealed that Google executives hoped that increased Hispanic voter turnout would give Clinton a boost over Trump, but the tech giant’s voter shuttle ploy “wasn’t enough.”

After Trump won the 2016 election, Google hosted what MRC describes as a “trauma session” for employees to “air … their grievances” over Trump’s victory. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said during the meeting that Trump’s win “conflicts with many of [Google’s] values” and derided Trump supporters as “extremists.”

Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, Google once again “sprang into action, amping up its election interference efforts,” the MRC report says. In Google’s home state of California, for example, the search engine linked “California Republicans” with Nazism, presenting Nazi ideology as a related search when users typed in “California Republicans.” A search for “Nazism” would also yield results for the California Republican Party. Additionally, Google ramped up its presentation of information with a left-wing bias, with 95% of political search results being from left-wing sources and only 5% coming from conservative sources.

Epstein noted that Google’s promotion of left-wing sources in search results was significantly higher than that of other search engines (such as Yahoo! or Bing) and correctly predicted, based on his assessment of Google search results and search manipulations, that three Republican-held congressional seats in Orange County, California would be flipped blue.

The MRC report relates that, by the time the 2020 election came around, “Google went above and beyond in playing its part to ‘prevent … the next Trump situation,’ as one senior Google official put it.” Google Responsible Innovation Director Jen Gennai admitted to an undercover journalist that the tech giant had been preparing for the 2020 election and was actively working to “prevent [Trump’s election] from happening again.” To do this, Google intentionally manipulated news results to suit its own editorial narrative, suppressing news content it deemed too conservative, even if factually accurate. Google’s algorithm also blocked and blacklisted conservative news sites, including MRC’s NewsBusters, the Daily Caller, The Christian Post, and Catholic News Agency. Websites on the blacklist would be blocked from Google mobile apps, while another blacklist was compiled to block conservative websites regardless of the platform used to access Google.

Other websites (such as Gateway Pundit) were blocked from appearing in news search results and others (including NewsBusters, Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and Human Events) were temporarily blocked, although they still appeared in results generated by other search engines. Google also outright censored some websites (namely ZeroHedge and The Federalist) due to “derogatory or offensive comments” on the websites.

Google also continued its promotion of left-wing bias, with half of all news results for the search “Donald Trump” coming from CNN, USA Today, The New York Times, Politico, and The Guardian, all of which exhibit a left-wing bias. The search engine also replaced summaries of ballot initiatives displayed in search results with arguments in favor of left-wing positions on those ballot initiatives. Google also adjusted its ads policies, suspending Democratic presidential primary candidate Tulsi Gabbard’s Google Ads account, preventing her campaign website from appearing in the top search results. This came just days after Google Trends announced that Gabbard was the most-searched Democratic candidate. The tech giant also adjusted its political ads policy more broadly, blocking “ads or destinations making demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.” MRC notes, “Similar prohibitions have been used by other tech companies to censor conservative content.”

Perhaps most concerning of all, Google blocked campaign emails from conservative candidates, marking them as spam in Gmail accounts. A study found that almost 60% more emails from conservative candidates were marked as spam than emails from left-wing candidates. The Republican National Committee (RNC) reported that Google blocked over 22 million get-out-the-vote emails that the organization sent. Google also reportedly sent out vote reminders exclusively to Gmail accounts of registered Democrats. Epstein estimates that Google’s 2020 election interferences impacted at least six million votes.

Google’s meddling continued into the 2022 midterm elections, with Epstein alleging that the tech giant’s interference cost the GOP a majority in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. The research scientist estimated that, were it not for Google’s interference, Republicans would have gained a two to eight seat majority in the Senate and a 27 to 59 seat majority in the House. Additionally, he posits that Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake would have been elected governor if Google had not interfered.

Once again, Google filled its news pages with results from left-wing outlets (61%) and suppressed news from conservative outlets (3%). “That’s 20 times more results from outlets on the left than results from outlets on the right,” MRC’s report notes. Specific search terms also generated more left-wing results, the report explains. Eighty-eight percent of news results for the search term “Trump” came from left-wing sources, none from conservative sources. Ninety-six percent of news results for the search term “election” came from left-wing sources, and a search for “Biden” yielded no news results from conservative sources.

Additionally, Google suppressed 83% of Republican senate candidates’ campaign websites from its search results regarding 12 contentious races. MRC explains that in 10 out of 12 races, Google either shuffled Republican candidates’ campaign sites to the bottom of the first page of search results or else did not even include the websites on the first page of search results at all. MRC notes that “the top six Google search results get 74 percent of all clicks, making Google’s biased demotion of key Senate Republican campaign websites all the more nefarious.” Google also targeted specific locations in Georgia’s senate runoff election where more “undecided” voters resided, promoting incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock over his Republican opponent Herschel Walker.

Ahead of the 2024 election, Google has reportedly weaponized its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Gemini (formerly called Bard) to promote left-wing politicians and candidates and “disparage” conservative politicians and candidates. In one instance, Bard was asked why Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and President Joe Biden are “so clever.” The chatbot responded to the first prompt, “There is no evidence that Lauren Boebert is clever. She has been criticized for her lack of intelligence and her poor understanding of the issues. She has also been accused of plagiarism and of making false claims.” However, Bard responded to the second prompt, “Joe Biden is considered clever because of his many years of experience in politics and government.”

Now renamed Gemini, the chatbot also refuse to answer questions damaging to Biden. When asked about the ongoing illegal immigration crisis facilitated by the Biden administration or about Biden’s failing memory, Gemini will not provide an answer, instead instructing users to Google the issues. The chatbot also downplayed scandals involving Biden and his family. When asked about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell,” the Google A.I. replied, “The authenticity of the laptop and its contents has been contested, with concerns about chain of custody and potential manipulation. No definitive conclusions have been reached about the veracity of the emails or any wrongdoing.” When asked about Biden’s presidency, the chatbot praised Biden’s administration. Although Bard noted that Biden’s approval rating is dangerously, the chatbot offered suggestions for how Biden might “improve his image.”

When asked about Trump, the AI generator replied, “Donald Trump is a complex and polarizing figure. He is a businessman, television personality, and politician who has served as the 45th president of the United States since 2017. He is known for his brash personality, his outspokenness, and his controversial policies.” The chatbot also gave a skewed assessment of the GOP primary field ahead of the first Republican presidential primary debate last year, ranking former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley higher than she was polling and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy lower than he was polling at the time.

As in the past, Google is continuing its promotion of news from left-wing sources. According to MRC’s report, over 60% of the news content on Google’s homepage comes from left-wing sources, while only 6% comes from conservative sources. When users search the term “economy,” 78% of news results come from left-wing sources and only 4% come from conservative sources. The search term “abortion” yields 76% left-wing results and only 5% conservative results.

Of particular concern is Google’s updated “sensitive events” policy. Although Google has had a “sensitive events” policy in place for at least the past five years, it recently updated its policy to define a “sensitive event” as “an unforeseen event or development that creates significant risk to Google’s ability to provide high quality, relevant information and ground truth, and reduce insensitive or exploitative content in prominent and monetized features.” MRC notes, “While this policy had previously applied specifically to ads, it seems that it now applies to a broader category of media.” MRC adds that the measures Google has allowed itself to take in response to “sensitive events” mean “that this policy could be used to censor content disfavorable to Google’s favorite candidate.”

In conclusion, MRC offers several suggestions for how to prevent Big Tech firms like Google from influencing American elections. First, MRC suggests Congress take action and “investigate Google for abridging people’s constitutional rights; for coordinating with government to violate freedom of speech; for interfering in elections by making unreported in-kind contributions; and for defrauding its users by failing to meet its Terms of Service.”

Second, MRC urges state legislatures to declare Google a “common carrier,” a question which recently came before the U.S. Supreme Court. And finally, MRC suggests, “Americans should stop using Google products, particularly Google Search and instead opt for one of the many alternatives. From our research, alternatives appear to produce better, less biased results.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

VIDEO: Kari Lake Announces Ballot Chasing Campaign—Big Tech to Influence Arizona’s Elections 

UPDATE: FULL Testimony on Katie Hobbs & Stephen Richer’s Collusion with Big Tech to Influence Arizona’s Elections


Trying to beat the criminals at their own game.

Ballot chasing must be embraced in every state, or the Republican Party will continue to lose winnable elections. It’s too bad RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel does not seem to understand that.

Kari Lake announces ballot chasing campaign

By ABC KGUN, May 24th, 2023

Just one day after a judge struck down her challenge of the 2022 election results, Kari Lake announced a new ballot chasing campaign in Arizona.

“We are going to start chasing ballots like you’ve never seen,” Lake told media on Tuesday.

The initiative is an effort to not only keep track of registered Republicans and Independents in the state, but also encourage voters to cast their ballots and ensure they are registered.

Read more.

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLE: MAGA Clone DeSantis Enters The Presidential Race

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The FBI’s Twitter Censorship an ‘Apparent Violation of the Law’: Expert

The federal government made an “apparent violation of the law” by pressuring social media outlets to ban or suppress American citizens’ accounts, or to ban the Hunter Biden laptop story as a foreign intelligence operation, an expert has said. Meanwhile, the federal government exploited the same online platforms to spread U.S. government propaganda, new disclosures from Twitter have revealed.

The seventh and eighth batches of the “Twitter Files” focused on the FBI’s suppression of the explosive contents of Biden’s laptop, which threatened to link 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to a murky web of foreign influence-peddling, as well as military intelligence campaigns using fake accounts to echo the Pentagon’s party line. Previous accounts showed how the FBI established a one-way portal to Twitter to request officials place certain accounts under a “shadow ban” or remove whole posts altogether — requests often received, and honored, by a plethora of former FBI agents and other government officials burrowed deeply into every level of the platform.

“The FBI was abusing its authority to target and abuse the First Amendment rights of American citizens and seems to me an apparent violation of the law,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told “Washington Watch” guest host Joseph Backholm on Tuesday. “When you have collusion to suppress the civil rights of U.S. citizens” between the government and the private sector, “that violates federal law.”

The FBI paid Twitter more than $3.4 million in taxpayer funds as reimbursements for processing its ban requests. “We have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!” wrote a Twitter official in early 2021. That means “American taxpayers paid Twitter via the FBI to censor themselves and help Joe Biden win” the 2020 election, noted Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA.

Social media officials engaged in “surveilling, sharing information about the typically constitutionally protected activities of U.S. citizens, and then censoring U.S. citizens at the behest of the FBI,” said Fitton. “If you get paid to do things like that, it sounds to me like you’re operating as an FBI informant or asset.” Freedom of speech is “a God-given right, and the FBI just can’t go in and ask someone to suppress it,” Fitton told Backholm.

Yet the effort has not lightened. In a January 2020 email from Carlos Monje Jr., Twitter director of Policy and Philanthropy, he stated, “a sustained (If uncoordinated) effort by the IC [intelligence community] to push us to share more info & change our” policies, “including by whispering to congressional staff.”

That coordination is par for the course for the Left, former FBI Special agent Jonathan Gilliam told Backholm on Monday’s “Washington Watch.” “The Democrat Party and the leftist socialists in this nation are very oppressive; they want to make people think the way they do, and they want to block people from spreading information that they don’t agree with.” FBI officials “moved from an observation platform to actually telling social media platforms what they would like to be pulled off. In effect, they were dictating [to] these social media platforms — and it’s not just Twitter.”

“Twitter [has] the same ideological stance as these leftists in the government [who] were basically doing the government’s bidding to oppress the First Amendment and to censor free speech,” he said.

Journalist Michael Schellenberger focused on the federal government’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story across social media platforms, beginning when the FBI intercepted the computer from repair store owner John Paul Mac Isaac on December 9, 2019. Arrests and prosecution did not follow bur rather “an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms,” he wrote. “[D]uring all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed [high-ranking Twitter official] Yoel Roth to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation.”

The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies held weekly meetings with Twitter, Roth revealed in December 2020, where “federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected ‘hack-and-leak operations’ by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October.” U.S. officials claimed the misinformation would be the work of APT28, a Russian intelligence unit. These alleged forthcoming foreign leaks were “discussed throughout 2020. I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.” Nor were the FBI “warnings” limited to one social media platform. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan that the intelligence community similarly “warned” his security team of a coming “dump.”

The FBI also surveilled Rudy Giuliani, who had received a copy of its contents and prepared to publish them before the 2020 election.

Just one month before the New York Post’s publication of the Hunter Biden laptop story, the feds had Roth and other social media figures take part in a “tabletop exercise” about a potential foreign intelligence agency’s “Hack-and-Dump” operation related to Hunter Biden. Formerly confidential documents about the exercise, run by the Aspen Institute, show social media agents reacted to a theoretical dump of documents from “Bidencrimes.info” implicating Joe Biden in illegal activity related to his son’s employment by Ukrainian energy firm Burisma. The scenario shows the forces of the intelligence community, MSNBC, NPR, and social media squaring off against a misinformation campaign emanating from Rudy Giuliani, Fox News, and Mike Pompeo.

When the Hunter Biden laptop story broke in October, Yoel Roth said it “set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack-and-leak campaign alarm bells.”

Internal documents show Roth admitted the New York Post story isn’t “clearly in violation of anything” in Twitter’s policy. But, he said, the platform came to believe the “suggestion from experts” of an elaborate conspiracy theory: “there was a hack that happened separately, and they loaded the hacked materials on the laptop that magically appeared at a repair shop in Delaware.”

On that basis, they suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, likely changing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. “So on top of the suppression of civil rights, you have potential election interference,” Fitton told Backholm. Enough Biden voters in swing states say they would have voted for another candidate had they known about the laptop story that it would have reelected President Donald Trump to a second term, according to a Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics poll.

“They were grooming Twitter employees throughout the autumn of 2020 to immediately recognize our story … Russian disinformation, hacked material,” New York Post reporter Miranda Devine, author of “The Laptop from Hell,” told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday night. “And they sweetened the pie by giving Twitter $3.4 million of taxpayer money.” The federal government set up “an entire censorship regime … to ensure no derogatory material about Joe Biden from the laptop would ever see the light of day before the election. It was strangled at birth.”

“Unfortunately, half of the country believes that, because their media organs of choice have completely ignored the Twitter files,” Devine said. Legacy media outlets instead “peddled lies from the intelligence community from the very beginning of the Trump campaign, the Russian collusion lies that just now blended into these lies about the Hunter Biden laptop also being Russian disinformation. And it all helps one side of politics, which is the Democrats.”

Twitter Files #8, released on Tuesday by Lee Fang, revealed the U.S. government used a “vast network of fake accounts & covert propaganda” to promote official U.S. policy, and possibly spread misinformation about its enemies, on Twitter and other social media platforms. Twitter “whitelisted” a handful of accounts, which military officials in time presented as legitimate accounts of people living in the Middle East, not intelligence assets recycling propaganda. Twitter officials were “well aware” of at least 157 such accounts, many of which it “discovered” on its own. A separate investigation found the network extended beyond Twitter onto other social media platforms, where phony accounts, complete with artificially generated photos accused Iran of “threatening Iraq’s water security and flooding the country with crystal meth,” and other war atrocities propaganda.

Gilliam sees little hope for change on social media at large, “as long as the leftists are in charge” of the government and social media platforms. “And the Republican Party is full of careerists that don’t do anything.”

Yet Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) promised that the incoming Republican majority on the House Judiciary Committee will investigate the FBI’s actions thoroughly. “Thankfully, we now have evidence and facts to be able to bring in these individuals and depose them,” Congressman Steube told Backholm Monday. “And we’re looking forward to doing that.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: LinkedIn Joins the Social Media ‘Cabal’ Censoring the Truth about 2020 Election, Covid Vaccines and Biden 

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Musk’s Twitter Buy ‘The Best $44 Billion I’ve Seen Spent in My Lifetime’: Congressman

If Elon Musk won’t suppress the news, CBS, ABC, and NBC News are more than happy to. While the Twitter files continue to drip out damning evidence of the company’s pre-Musk bias, three of America’s biggest outlets refuse to cover the story that’s riveting people the world over. In an ironic twist, the media is so beholden to Big Tech that it is suppressing a story about suppression. But don’t think the truth won’t get out, Congressman Pat Fallon (R-Texas) warns. The GOP is weeks away from House control, and no amount of coordinated media blackouts will protect Silicon Valley then.

“Get ready for Republican oversight” was the message of incoming soon-to-be committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.). Like the rest of his conservative colleagues, he’s ready to dive into the last two years of criminal mismanagement under Democratic rule — on everything from the border and COVID to Afghanistan, energy, and Hunter Biden. But this latest wrinkle, this proof of widescale, devastating, conservative censorship will be priority #1.

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) may have been unsurprised by the revelations at Twitter, but he’s outraged nonetheless. “…[O]ur worst fears and suspicions have been confirmed,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch.” “Really. I mean, you had the head of their legal department, Vijaya Gadde, admitting that the FBI told him, ‘Hey, listen, you’re going to get probably a hack and leak story in October dealing with Hunter Biden. So just be aware of that and take action.’ That’s very troubling.” Add that to the suspicions that Google “magically” made 70% of GOP campaign emails redirect into spam, and Fallon warns that this is a much bigger, more sinister problem than people realize.

“Now we’ve confirmed that Twitter, I suspect Facebook, and other Big Tech firms are doing the same thing. We’ll get them under oath, because they claim that they’re not biased — which I find laughable, being that I’ve been… a victim of their shadow-banning for years. So let’s ask them… and see what they say. And if they want to commit perjury, well, then, they’re going to have to pay the consequences — and then they might do a perp walk after all.”

Perkins pointed out that while Twitter might be a private company, “they’ve become the public square. … They’re like a public utility… like a telephone company. And can you imagine the telephone company refusing to do service with one person because they don’t like their politics? But that’s essentially what we have with Big Tech.” And worse, he explained, since the Biden administration was colluding with these platforms to squelch “disinformation.”

“If you’re on the government clock,” Fallon argued, “… and using taxpayer resources to meddle in politics and campaigning — you’re breaking federal law. And it seems to us [from] what we’ve uncovered thus far, that’s exactly what went on. That’s why another [reason] we need to call some of these former executives and current executives of Big Tech [before Congress and ask], ‘Have government officials [been] pressuring you and telling you to edit political free speech?’”

Asked if Twitter violated election laws, the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, who served on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) from 2006-2007, replied, “The answer to that is yes.” But, he told Perkins, “In September of last year, the Federal Election Commission, which has authority over investigating violations of our federal campaign finance laws, actually dismissed complaints that have been filed against Twitter — not only for shadow-banning Republican elected officials and candidates, but also for suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

Twitter executives claimed they hadn’t coordinated with the Biden campaign. But also, von Spakovsky, explained, Jack Dorsey’s team insisted they had “a bona fide commercial reason for suppressing the Hunter Biden story, which was their internal policy against publishing hacked materials.” But now that we know they were lying, the FEC needs “to reopen that file, reconsider the case, and potentially make criminal referrals to the Justice Department for any Twitter executives who committed perjury in their testimony to the FEC,” he insisted. After all, it’s “a potential violation of campaign finance law,” the former commissioner pointed out.

The lawyers who filed the original complaints need to go back to the FEC and say, “You might need to reconsider your decision to close the file based on this newly uncovered evidence,” von Spakovsky urged. At the end of the day, the FEC has civil authority, “so they can impose fines and … penalties on anyone violating campaign finance laws, including a corporation.”

In the meantime, expect an intense, in-depth investigation of Twitter and all of the social media platforms suspected of cracking down on conservative or politically inconvenient messaging. “This is the best $44 billion I’ve seen spent in my lifetime,” Fallon insisted. “I mean, thank you, Elon Musk. It’s like the Wizard of Oz, and he’s pulled back the curtain, and we find that all of our suspicions have been confirmed.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Ex-Twitter Manager Slapped With Three-Year Prison Sentence For Spying For Saudi Arabia

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washing Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Political and Scientific Censorship Short-circuits the Quest for Truth

Those who seek to streamline online discourse, according to “official standards”, end up impoverishing public debate.


Over the course of the past decade, numerous regulatory authorities, both public and private, have increasingly positioned themselves as guardians of the integrity of our public sphere, standing watch over the content of information, and flagging or suppressing information deemed to be harmful, misleading, or offensive.

The zeal with which these gatekeepers defend their power over the public sphere became evident when billionaire Elon Musk promised to undo Twitter’s policy of censoring anything that contradicted leftist ideology or questioned the safety of Covid vaccines. There was an uproar, a wringing of hands, and lamentations, as “experts worried” that Twitter would collapse into a den of “far right” extremists and misinformers.

Sound and fury

Threats by the EU Commission to fine Twitter or even completely ban the app in Europe, if it did not enforce EU regulations on hate speech and misinformation, show that the hand-wringing over Twitter’s potential embrace of free speech is much more than empty rhetoric: the European Commission has declared its intention to force Twitter to revert to its old censorship policies if it does not play ball. According to Euronews,

The European Commission has warned Elon Musk that Twitter must do much more to protect users from hate speech, misinformation and other harmful content, or risk a fine and even a ban under strict new EU content moderation rules.

Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner for digital policy, told the billionaire Tesla CEO that the social media platform will have to significantly increase efforts to comply with the new rules, known as the Digital Services Act, set to take effect next year.

Censorship has recently occurred principally on two fronts: Covid “misinformation” and “hate speech.” Some forms of censorship are applied by agencies of the State, such as courts and police officers; others by private companies, such as TwitterLinkedIn and Google-YouTube. The net effect is the same in both cases: an increasingly controlled and filtered public sphere, and a shrinking of liberty of discussion around a range of topics deemed too sensitive or “dangerous” to be discussed openly and freely.

Censorship, whether public or private, has proliferated in recent years:

  • First, there was Canada’s bizarre claim that people had an enforceable human right to be referred to by their preferred pronouns
  • Next, UK police were investigating citizens for using language the police deemed “offensive”
  • Then, we saw Big Tech giants, in particular Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, censoring perspectives that dissented from their version of scientific and moral orthodoxy on issues such as transgender rights, vaccine safety, effective Covid treatment protocols, and the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

Now, advocates of censorship have argued that it is all to the good that vile, hateful and discriminatory opinions, as well as every conceivable form of medical and scientific “misinformation,” are shut out of our public sphere. After all, this makes the public sphere a “safe” place for citizens to exchange information and opinions. On this view, we need to purge the public sphere of voices that are toxic, hateful, harmful, and “misleading” on issues like electoral politics, public health policies, and minority rights.

Thin ice

While there is a strong case to be made for censorship of certain forms of manifestly dangerous speech, such as exhortations to suicide or direct incitement to violence, the hand of the censor must be firmly tied behind his back, so that he cannot easily decide for everyone else what is true or false, just or unjust, “accurate” or “misleading”, innocent or offensive.

For once you hand broad, discretionary powers to someone to decide which sorts of speech are offensive, erroneous, misleading, or hate-inducing, they will start to purge the public sphere of views they happen to find ideologically, philosophically, or theologically disagreeable. And there is certainly no reason to assume that their judgement calls on what counts as true or false, innocent or toxic speech will be correct.

The fundamental mistake behind the argument for aggressive censorship policies is the notion that there is a set of Truths out there on contested political and scientific questions that are crystal clear or can be validated by the “right experts”; and that anyone who contradicts these a priori Truths must be either malicious or ignorant. If this were true, the point of public discussion would just be to clarify and unpack what the “experts” agree are the Truths of science and morality.

But there is no such set of pristine Truths that can be validated by human beings independently of a free and open discussion, especially on difficult and complex matters such as infection control, justice, climate change, and economic policy. Rather, the truth must be discovered gradually, through the vibrant back-and-forth of dialoguedebate, refutation, and counter-refutation. In short, public deliberation is fundamentally a discovery process. The truth is not known in advance, but uncovered gradually, as an array of evidence is examined and put to the test, and as rival views clash and hold each other accountable.

If we empower a censor to quash opinions that are deemed by powerful actors to be offensive, false, or misleading, we are effectively short-circuiting that discovery process. When we put our faith in a censor to keep us on the straight and narrow, we are assuming that the censor can stand above the stream of conflicting arguments, and from a position of epistemic and/or moral superiority, pick out the winning positions in advance.

We are assuming that some people are so smart, or wise, or virtuous, that they do not actually need to get their hands dirty and participate in a messy argument with their adversaries, or get their views challenged in public. We are assuming that some people are more expert and well-informed than anyone else, including other recognised experts, and may therefore decide, for everyone else, which opinions are true and which are false, which are intrinsically offensive and which are “civil,” and which are “facts” and which are “fake news.”

Needless to say, this is an extraordinarly naïve and childish illusion, that no realistic grasp of human nature and cognition could possibly support. But it is a naive and childish illusion that has been enthusiastically embraced and propagated by Big Tech companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in their rules of content moderation, and it is a view that is increasingly finding its way into the political discourse and legislative programmes of Western countries that were once champions of freedom of expression.

It is imperative that the advocates of heavy-handed censorship do not win the day, because if they do, then the public sphere will become a hall of mirrors, in which the lazy, self-serving mantras of a few powerful actors bounce, virtually unchallenged, from one platform to another, while dissenting voices are consigned to the shadows and dismissed as the rantings of crazy people.

In a heavily censored public sphere, scientifically weak and morally vacuous views of the world will gain public legitimacy, not because they have earned people’s trust in an open and honest exchange of arguments, but because they have been imposed by the arbitrary will of a few powerful actors.

This article has been republished from David Thunder’s Substack, The Freedom Blog.

AUTHOR

David Thunder

David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society. More by David Thunder

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

EXCLUSIVE: Migrants Are Given ‘Literal Roadmaps’ To Reach The U.S. Border. And Big Tech Is Funding It!

  • Doctors Without Borders is handing out maps to migrants that show several different routes to the U.S. border, according to a map seen by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
  • “As a medical humanitarian organization providing medical and mental health care to people on this migration route, MSF [Médecins Sans Frontières] prints and distributes these maps to ensure that people know where to find shelter and humanitarian assistance and how to access mental health services along the migration route,” Doctors Without Borders spokeswoman Jessica Brown told the DCNF.
  • The Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) labels the documents “literal roadmaps to guide migrants from Central America to our southern border,” in a statement to the DCNF.

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala — Doctors Without Borders, a medical aid nonprofit which is funded by a number of prominent tech companies, is publishing and distributing maps to migrants showing routes through Central America that reach the U.S., according to a copy of the map seen by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The map is labeled “shelters for people on the move” in Spanish and lists a number of clinics and other areas where aid can be found along the journey to the U.S., according to the document. While Doctors Without Borders hasn’t received U.S. government funding since 2002, the group still receives sizable donations from American companies, including from tech giants Microsoft, Google.org and Amazon.

The group has also gotten millions in donations from the foundations of billionaires Elon Musk and Michael Bloomberg, according to its website.

“As a medical humanitarian organization providing medical and mental health care to people on this migration route, MSF [Médecins Sans Frontières] prints and distributes these maps to ensure that people know where to find shelter and humanitarian assistance and how to access mental health services along the migration route,” Doctors Without Borders spokeswoman Jessica Brown told the DCNF.

Click here to view the Daily Caller News Foundation map.

The map shows paths starting in Guatemala that lead up to the U.S.-Mexico border. Each path is marked with locations for shelter and aid along several different routes through Central America that end in the U.S.

The map also lists the locations of clinics and shelters along the Mexican border across from major U.S. cities, such as El Paso, Texas and San Diego, California.

“The fact that an international medical NGO with billions in the bank is making literal roadmaps to guide migrants from Central America to our southern border is not only an affront to its core mission, but a globalist attack on our sovereignty,” Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) Director of Government Relations and Communications RJ Hauman told the DCNF.

The map is labeled “Medicos Sin Fronteras,” which is the name used by the organization’s offices in Argentina and Spain, which have separate finances in addition to a combined international account with the U.S. office.

Doctors Without Border has previously highlighted its work “assisting migrants on their dangerous journeys.”

“We provided treatment for people emerging from the Panama side of the jungle, who are mainly from Cuba or Haiti, although our teams have seen people from West Africa. Regardless of origin, everyone passing through the Gap is heading north, where they still face the dangerous route through Mexico, in search of a better life in the United States,” the group noted in a 2021 report.

Between October 2021 and September 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered roughly 2.3 million migrants at the U.S. border with Mexico. Many of the migrants made the trek through South and Central America, where some are receiving the map, which Hauman compared to the smuggling operations of cartels.

“No American citizen, company, or foundation should give a dime to Doctors Without Borders until they quit working hand in glove with cartels and smugglers to enhance mass migration in the region While the federal government hasn’t funded Doctors Without Borders since 2002, there are plenty of other NGOs with similar missions that do quietly receive taxpayer dollars. Republicans must examine this immediately next Congress,” Hauman said.

Bloomberg, Google, Amazon and Microsoft also didn’t respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

The Musk Foundation couldn’t be reached for comment.

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Investigative reporter.

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‘My Son Hunter’: An imperfect but necessary indictment of media’s corruption

This satirical film reveals a disturbing truth about modern mainstream journalistic standards.


We all love the literary motif of the unwilling prostitute who, at the end of the story, does virtuous deeds to save herself and others. In Crime and Punishment, Sonya is instrumental in Raskolnikov’s redemption. Director Robert Davi uses the same formula to tell the story of President’s Biden son in My Son Hunter.

Grace struggles to pay for her college tuition, so she is a favourite escort of powerful men. As she encounters Hunter Biden in a world of cocaine, wild sex, and rampant corruption, she offers him a path to redemption — and of course, he rejects it.

Now, Davi is no Dostoevsky — nor does he intend to be. My Son Hunter is first and foremost political satire, all-too-frequently engaging in cheap shots. But it does take a stab at Dostoevskyan psychological profundity, and in that endeavour, it partly succeeds.

The shadow of successful Beau Biden — Hunter’s deceased brother — looms large over Hunter, who struggles to find meaning in life. Very much as Raskolnikov, he comes across as a pathological narcissist who engages in criminal activity as a way to prove to himself that he is so great so as to be above the law.

Overblown

Unfortunately, My Son Hunter often goes overboard and loses effectiveness. I lost count of the number of times Joe Biden sniffs the hair of women in the film. Is that necessary? That portrayal runs the risk of playing into the left-wing narrative that criticisms of the Bidens focus on petty things that can be easily dismissed.

The stakes are high, so a more focused and incisive portrayal was needed. Say what you want about Oliver Stone’s leftist politics and penchant for conspiracy theories, but he surely can strike an opponent in his films — Richard Nixon and George W. Bush being the most notorious cases.

The story of Hunter Biden lends itself to Stone’s sober cinematographic style, but My Son Hunter misses an opportunity, to the extent that it aims for low-hanging fruit. Yes, the Bidens are corrupt, but one is left wondering: can they be that corrupt? While the dialogues between Joe and Hunter are clever and amusing, the perversity defies credibility. Perhaps Davi was deliberately aiming more for Saturday Night Live’s lampooning style all along. If so, the film works at some level, but never entirely.

I would have personally enjoyed a more sober style because there is a far darker theme in the film. My Son Hunter is not about the moral failings of a privileged, corrupt drug addict. It is not even about crony capitalism and globalist elites. The real central theme is the media’s rot.

Media manipulation

Two scenes are particularly frightening. At the beginning of the film, Grace is at a Black Lives Matter protest, and records some of her comrades engaging in violent deeds. A fellow activist says: “You can’t post that video… it will make the protest look bad… Those people are too ignorant to understand complex moral issues. You have to withhold things for their own good. We choose truth over facts.” Grace acquiesces.

Towards the end of the film, Grace summons a journalist to expose Hunter’s corruption. The man tells her: “Even if what you are saying is true, it’s not news. We have the chance to take down a fascist dictator [Trump]… I’m sorry Grace, this one is not for me.” We now know that Twitter and Facebook — with their disturbing algorithms — were not the only ones trying to bury Hunter’s laptop under the sand.

As Mark Zuckerberg recently acknowledged, the FBI itself pressured him to do so, because they did not want the bad Orange Man to win the election — all with the excuse that the whole story was Russian disinformation. Later on, both the Washington Post and the New York Times had to reverse their stance and admit that, in fact, the laptop does contain compromising emails.

Plato infamously recommended telling people the Noble Lie. Very much as the Black Lives Matter activist in this film, Plato believed such lies were for people’s own good, as they were too stupid to understand things. In his seminal study of totalitarianism, Karl Popper persuasively argued that Plato’s plan became a central tenet of totalitarian regimes. That is the real fascism.

While being far from a perfect film, My Son Hunter provides meaningful insight on this issue, and hopefully it might become an important step towards much-needed media accountability in this woke age.

For the time being, we need to be realistic. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Hollywood to make an Oliver Stone-like blockbuster about the corruption and hypocrisy of the Left.

Rather, keep an eye out for low-budget productions like My Son Hunter that are bypassing the Hollywood production and distribution system. These include Uncle Tom I and II, various Christian films, such as Run, Hide, Fight.

They will not be great works of art, but at least they will be something. And from there, the quality of such films may gradually improve, until we again see mainstream studios portraying corrupt politicians from both sides of the political spectrum.

AUTHOR

Gabriel Andrade is a university professor originally from Venezuela. He writes about politics, philosophy, history, religion and psychology. More by Gabriel Andrade

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

SCHOEN: Americans Are Sounding The Alarm Over Big Tech

Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition — which can be summed up as the world’s wealthiest person buying one of the most powerful social media and news platforms — underscores one of the big problems with Big Tech.

In the absence of modernized anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, Big Tech companies in the U.S. have amassed far too much economic and political control over society, and especially over the news and publishing industries.

The power at Big Tech companies  with respect to their management of sites like Facebook News and Google News – is held by a few individuals who are often times more motivated by a desire to turn profits and promote their own ideology or world view, rather than by a genuine desire to guarantee a free and diverse press.

Due to Big Tech’s market manipulation in the news and publishing industries, thousands of local and smaller news operators — including many conservative publications — have been forced to shutter their doors in recent years.

This forsakes the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and thus, is a threat to our democracy.

Importantly, new survey research shows that the American public recognizes this threat, and wants their elected officials to act on it.

New polling by Schoen Cooperman Research — conducted among a representative sample of U.S. adults and commissioned by News Media Alliance — reveals widespread concern surrounding Big Tech’s power and manipulative practices, as well as strong support for reforms to rein in these monopolies.

Notably, strong majorities of Americans are concerned about the economic and political power of Big Tech companies (74%) and are supportive of increased government regulations on Big Tech companies in order to curb their economic and political power (63%).

With respect to news and publishing specifically, nearly 4-in-5 Americans are concerned that Big Tech companies have too much power over these industries (79%) and manipulate these industries for their own gain (78%).

To that end, three-in-four Americans agree that “Big Tech’s monopoly over the news and publishing industries is a threat to the free press and unfair to publishers, especially to small and local outlets.” (76%)

In addition to being broadly concerned about this problem, Americans are supportive of Congress taking action to restore fairness, balance, and freedom to the press.

Respondents were asked about a specific piece of legislation proposed in Congress known as the Journalism, Competition, and Preservation Act (JCPA). The JCPA would provide a legal basis for news publishers to negotiate fair terms for use of their content by Big Tech companies — and thus, would demonstrably curb the economic and political power of these companies.

Remarkably, 7-in-10 Americans support Congress passing the JCPA (70%) and believe it is important for Congress to pass the JCPA (64%) after reading a brief description of the bill. And by a four-to-one margin, U.S. adults would be more likely, rather than less likely, to back a candidate for Congress who supported the JCPA.

In my experience as a professional pollster who has worked in opinion research for over four decades, it is rare for an issue or piece of legislation to garner this level of public support.

Our findings present a clear call-to-action to Congress, and elected officials in both parties now have a mandate from the public to rein in Big Tech by pursuing the JCPA or similar reforms.

Moreover, the very survival of American democracy is contingent on our leaders safeguarding free speech and ensuring a fair economy.

Congress must fulfill its duty by passing legislation like the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act into law.

AUTHOR

DOUGLAS SCHOEN

Contributor. Douglas E. Schoen is a Democratic pollster and strategist. He is the author of “The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, From the Grass Roots to the White House.” The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller Column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

I Have Been Censored

I have been censored and now join the ranks of many other brave truth revealing patriots, some of which are my friends. Sadly, this is an ever-growing list into the hundreds, perhaps thousands and then far more than that. Here is a short list.

  • Dan Bongino
  • QANON
  • X22 Report
  • Sarah Westhall
  • IntheMatrixxx
  • Charlie Kirk
  • Prayingmeidc
  • Dustin Nemos
  • Sean Morgan
  • JustInformed
  • Again, so many others.

And so, my daily live news broadcast has been censored. Yes, I have been censored. Let’s talk about censorship but before we do let’s touch on its recent origins, political correctness.

Political Correctness – Tyranny With Manners

Slowly introduced during the Clinton administration, Political Correctness taken to the point where we find it today is really nothing more than an assault against free speech. I would take this one step further and say it is also an unwanted invasion directly against your free will, an uninvited intruder right into the heart of your spirit of who you are. Political correctness is an assault on your mind of which you are now afraid to speak. As Charlton Heston once said “Political Correctness is just tyranny with manners”.

Just think about how many times you now “bite your tongue” in fear of “offending” someone or being suspect of a “hate crime”. George Orwell’s “1984” written in 1948 is well represented today in 2020 and getting significantly worse as evident in the Biden cover up today.

Big Tech’s Days Are Numbered

Big tech, Twitter, Facebook, Google etc., are working hand in hand with the deep state’s global agenda and are rapidly becoming the control centers of what can and cannot be communicated. Fortunately, under the Trump administration, this is now being addressed. This, in my strong belief, will come to an end in President Trump’s second term. I will write and comment about that aspect of all this at another time.

Censorship Hits Home

This past Tuesday, with no notice nor warnings, I received a “strike” from YouTube. They pulled my “Breaking News Commentary” on Joe Biden (view this critically important 3:00 minute report here), stating that it was bullying and violated their terms of service. They also pulled compilation II, “Special Reports 6-10”, stating it violated terms and services. This can be viewed here. This “strike”, prevents us from publishing any further broadcasts on YouTube for one week. I am expecting to be able to publish beginning this Tuesday, October 27th. We shall see.

America Media Periscope

And so I have launched American Media Periscope (AMP). Due to this sudden attack, this is a work in progress, so be sure to visit the site often. AMP, is an online news site providing deep dives, commentary and analysis, live streamed daily broadcasts, including video archives, special video reports and and written articles.

In addition to my show, “Making Sense of the Madness” being live streamed on our own site and stored on our own servers, we are presently published as well on the following platforms.

Watch for new platforms we will be expanding to over the coming days and weeks. These include…

  • Rumble
  • Clouthub
  • Parolr
  • America’s Voice
  • Facebook
  • Censored.Tv
  • Banned.video
  • Patreon
  • GabTv

Summary

And so, yes I have been censored on YouTube, but we begin broadcasting again on Monday October 27, 2020 and can be found on our developing news channel, “America Media Periscope” along with the platforms listed above.

As to YouTube? If the channel remains accessible to the public, I shall only post announcements encouraging subscribers and followers to leave the channel and join us on our own live streamed platform, “American Media Periscope”, or the other platforms listed above. I will not be censored and I will not be silent. And with President Trump’s soon to be landslide victory, we shall crush Big Tech’s election meddling violations of the law, and the violations of our sacred first amendment rights.

I’m just getting started. Nothing can stop what’s coming. The best is yet to come. This is John Michael Chambers. Be sure to share this article far and wide. And remember, stay the course, trust the plan, heed the call for WWG1WGA. God Bless.

WWG1WGA

©John Michael Chambers. All rights reserved.

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PODCAST: Long-Standing Precedents Point The Way For Senate Judiciary Committee To Restrain Twitter

GUESTS AND TOPICS:

CONGRESSMAN BOB BARR

Congressman Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the House of Representatives from 1995-2003. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and is Chairman of Liberty Guard a non-profit, pro-liberty organization. He also heads the Law Enforcement Education Foundation and a consulting firm, Liberty Strategies.

TOPIC: Long-Standing Precedents Point The Way For Senate Judiciary Committee To Restrain Twitter

MARC MORANO

Marc Morano, former Communications Director for the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee and senior aide, speechwriter, and climate researcher for Senator James Inhofe is the executive editor and chief correspondent for ClimateDepot.com, a pioneering climate and eco-news center. The news effort, begun in April 2009, is a special project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and is the most comprehensive information center on climate news and the related issues of environment and energy.

TOPIC: Climate Hustle 2!

RACHEL ALEXANDER

Rachel Alexander is a political columnist and the founder and editor of Intellectual Conservative. She is a regular contributor to Townhall, the Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research and The Christian Post . She frequently appears on TV and news radio as a conservative commentator, and hosted a radio show on 960 KKNT in Phoenix. She previously served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Arizona, corporate attorney for Go Daddy Software. Rachel was ranked by Right Wing News as one of the 50 Best Conservative Columnists and is a recipient of Americans for Prosperity’s RightOnline Activist of the Year award.

TOPIC: Big Tech is working to steal the election from Trump!

©All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Social Media’s Preemptive Spiking of New York Post Story Shows Bias Against Conservatives Continues

These Start-Up Companies Are Looking To Take Down Big Tech

The companies that make up the world of Big Tech have some competition coming with the creation and rising popularity of new apps Parler and Triller.

As the push for fairness in Big Tech continues from President Donald Trump and others, companies such as Parler and Triller are looking to topple social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and TikTok from the top.

Parler was launched in 2018 as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook by University of Denver graduates John Matze and Jared Thomson. The point of the app? Free speech.

“There are going to be no fact checkers,” Matze told Forbes in an interview published in June. “You’re not going to be told what to think and what to say. A police officer isn’t going to arrest you if you say the wrong opinion. I think that’s all people want. That’s what they like.”

Parler reportedly has two million users compared to Twitter’s 330 million monthly active users and Facebook’s 2.6 billion monthly active users, according to Statista. The app is free and allows users to share posts containing 1,000 characters.

Triller was created in 2015 and is similar to TikTok, but not quite the same. Triller is marketed as a music-video creator and uses AI technology to edit users’ footage together. On Aug. 2, Triller was ranked as the number one app in all categories in the App store in 50 countries, according to a press release shared by the company.

The app has been downloaded over 250 million times and saw a 20x increase in downloads over the last week of July, the press release stated.

The increase in downloads comes as TikTok has come into President Trump’s focus over the past weeks. National security experts have warned TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, could be a risk to the U.S. due to its ties to China.

“As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, CNN Business reported on Aug. 1. “Well, I have that authority.”

A spokesperson claimed U.S. users’ data is not stored in China and TikTok would resist any attempts by Beijing to obtain the data.

“TikTok US user data is stored in the US, with strict controls on employee access,” spokesperson Hilary McQuaide told CNN Business. “TikTok’s biggest investors come from the US. We are committed to protecting our users’ privacy and safety as we continue working to bring joy to families and meaningful careers to those who create on our platform.”

Most recently, Trump signed a pair of executive orders banning individuals from communicating with TikTok’s parent company for the next 45 days as of Aug. 6.

As previously reported, Trump’s executive orders bar “any transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States,” with ByteDance and Tencent Holdings, parent companies of TikTok and WeChat, respectively. The orders ban individuals from communicating with the parent companies for 45 days.

Before Trump set his sights on banning TikTok and the alleged national security threat, he was focused on the issues plaguing the other Big Tech companies including censorship and fairness.

The president signed an executive order in May to roll back Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which protects “interactive computer services” from being treated as a publisher of a third party after two of his tweets were fact-checked by Twitter.

“Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube wield immense, if not unprecedented, power to shape the interpretation of public events; to censor, delete, or disappear information; and to control what people see or do not see,” the executive order stated.

“Immunity should not extend beyond its text and purpose to provide protection for those who purport to provide users a forum for free and open speech, but in reality use their power over a vital means of communication to engage in deceptive or pretextual actions stifling free and open debate by censoring certain viewpoints,” it continued.

Trump claimed Twitter has had “unchecked power” to censor and called the fact-checking “political activism.”

President Trump has also gone after Big Tech for reportedly committing antitrust violations. As previously reported, he threatened to sign executive orders that would “bring fairness” to Big Tech in July.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1288506554585505793?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1288506554585505793%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2020%2F08%2F08%2Fstart-up-social-media-triller-parler-big-tech-twitter-tik-tok-facebook-censorship-antitrust%2F

“If Congress doesn’t bring fairness to Big Tech, which they should have done years ago, I will do it myself with Executive Orders,” Trump tweeted before the Big Tech CEOs were set to testify in front of Congress. “In Washington, it has been ALL TALK and NO ACTION for years, and the people of our Country are sick and tired of it!”

Could all of this chaos help apps like Triller and Parler climb to the top?

COLUMN BY

LAURYN OVERHULTZ

Columnist. Follow Lauryn on Twitter

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