Trump campaign chief: Big Tech becoming Big Brother
'New Orwellian impulse
Published: 23 hours ago
Art Moore

President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager says the giants of Silicon Valley are stifling free speech, particularly conservative speech, manifesting the “inherent totalitarian impulse” of the left.

In an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, Brad Parscale wrote that social media platforms “that once facilitated the free exchange of ideas and information are now actively seeking to silence and censor conservative opinions.”

“This new Orwellian impulse that is taking over Big Tech is particularly problematic because social media websites, which are supposed to be safe spaces for all free speech, get special legal perks,” he said.

Parscale noted that under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, websites such as Facebook and Twitter are not treated as publishers of “information provided by another,” which would subject them to libel laws, because they “offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse.”

That means, he argues, they are “not merely private companies who can censor whomever they wish but public forums that allow free and open debate.”

“Yet, they’re doing the exact opposite,” he said, “stifling online speech, warping the national discourse, and obstructing the free flow of ideas.”

The companies, he said are actively trying to silence conservatives and deprive them of online platforms.

He cited as an example Twitter recently suspending conservative activist Candace Owens for satirical tweets mimicking the racist, anti-white tweets of New York Times editorial board member Sarah Jeong.

Jeong, he noted, has never been suspended from Twitter despite a history of racist comments.

Parscale also cited revelations that Twitter had shadowbanned prominent Republican leaders.

Facebook, meanwhile, “changed its feed algorithms — ostensibly to combat fake news — but the result has been a suspicious and significant drop in the reach of conservative pages and advertisements.”

Earlier this month, Facebook banned a Republican congressional candidate’s ad because it depicted images of the Cambodian genocide.

A study by Western Journal found that while liberal publishers saw a roughly 2 percent increase in web traffic from Facebook following the algorithm changes, conservative sites saw a loss of traffic averaging around 14 percent.

He also noted Facebook, Google (YouTube) and Twitter all work with the Southern Poverty Law Center, the far-left organization that puts major pro-family Christian organizations such as the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom on its “hate list” along with the Ku Klux Klan.

Controversial commentator Alex Jones and his website Infowars were banned last week from Facebook, YouTube and other sites, which he said “will inevitably lead to the silencing of those with far less controversial opinions than Jones.”

“What we are seeing in Big Tech is the inherent totalitarian impulse of the Left come into full focus,” Parscale said.


https://www.wnd.com/2018/08/trump-campai...ng-big-brother/

Big Tech, big entitlement, big problem
Exclusive: Craige McMillan on how internet companies hoping to have it both ways
Craige McMillan

It just seems odd: The more money and power the tech titans get, the more entitled they seem to become. Way back in the early days, however, it wasn’t so.

In the late 1990s, internet service providers began getting sued for 1) hosting copyrighted content on their platform they hadn’t licensed, and 2) lying about individuals and harming their lives. In most cases, the ISPs weren’t actually doing this, someone who had an account with them was doing it.

The music and movie industries made it clear to Congress that this had to change. By the late 1990s Congress had acted, creating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Basically, the DMCA protected the ISPs and content finders (search engines) from their subscribers, who were the ones really posting copyrighted material or telling lies about their friends and enemies.

Congress worked out a special deal for the ISPs and search engines, and in 1998 Bill Clinton signed it into law. If ISPs and search engines followed the new law regarding takedowns of copyrighted or defamatory material promptly, they were off the hook for financial damages. The person who posted the material could still be sued, of course, but the ISPs and search services no longer cared. They made a great point out of saying that they didn’t regulate content.

There were, however, a few catches in the DMCA. According to NOLO’s legal encyclopedia, ISPs and search engines must: