Tech Giants Are Suppressing Conservative Speech

By MIKE MANNO

Two weeks ago the Media Research Center (MRC) released a comprehensive report entitled, Censored! How Online Media Companies Are Suppressing Conservative Speech. The report, authored by Ashley Rae Goldenberg and Dan Gainor, is a devastating indictment of the left-leaning policies of Twitter, Facebook, Google, and YouTube, and it amplifies and underscores arguments that the far left is attempting stifle all opposing views.
Of course the content of the MRC report will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with other forms of conservative censorship: colleges restricting so-called free-speech zones, and using claims of violence to double and sometimes triple “security fees” for conservative groups who want to host a speaker, violent demonstrations which shut down non-liberal presenters, the roadblocks the IRS put up to prevent politically conservative nonprofits from gaining tax-exempt status, as well as using nebulous terms such as “hate speech” to censor anyone who disagrees with the LGBT or abortion agendas.
But the 50-page report spells out in graphic detail how Big Tech puts the online squeeze on conservatives and their values. One common tactic used by each of the groups mentioned above is the use of algorithms and policies that search out certain topics or words that are frequently used by conservative groups, such a patriot, God, guns, Second Amendment, and similar terms from posts, ads, or used as hashtags.
Another common tactic is to remove posts, or in some cases completely take down entire accounts for engaging in “hate speech,” as determined by a board of advisers or consultants who determine what hate speech is by what left-leaning groups, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, says that it is. Thus, groups that oppose abortion, unrestricted immigration, and same-sex marriage are deemed to be “hate groups” who can — and in the opinion of Big Tech, should — have their observations and posts removed.
I mention the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as one such group because it was once a legitimate civil rights organization. Yet many still considered it as such and it is used by numerous media outlets to determine what is a hate group and what is not. Included in the SPLC’s list of hate groups are the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, and the Black Panthers — so far, OK. But it also includes the American Family Association and the Family Research Council, along with several legal groups defending religious freedom, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Pacific Justice Institute as haters, too.
So, the report found, if you show up on the SPLC’s hate group list (its site even has a hate map) you are, ipso facto, a hater and your message must be destroyed, lest some irresistible global harm be released on the land, like a swarm of locusts. So in your readings, note which group the name-calling is coming from — that will tell a lot about the veracity of the claim.
Another common theme is that once an ad or post is rejected, or an account is taken down, it is done so in such a manner that the offending party is often unaware of the extent that his posts are not being carried. And when he does find out and makes a complaint, the usual response is that he crossed some imaginary line set forth by the site’s policies. Often that is all that is forthcoming from the Tech Censor, with no further explanation unless the offending party frustrates himself by demanding a further explanation, which he usually won’t get.
Finally, if the word gets out via other media that so-and-so is being censored for his viewpoint, the Tech Wizard will fold his tent, issue an apology claiming that something was wrong with the algorithm or some low-level and overworked employee just made a mistake, and the post or account is restored; much like the old adage, better to ask forgiveness than to seek permission!
Another common thread is the overwhelming employment of die-hard liberals by Big Tech. Twitter advisers who help it set polities, for example, by a 12-to-1 margin are liberal; a ratio that is not unusual in the industry.
Among some of the MRC report’s findings on individual media:
Twitter leads in censorship. “Twitter staffers admitted on hidden camera that they had been censoring conservatives through a technique known as shadow banning, where users think their content is getting seen widely, but it’s not.” Twitter’s direct marketing engineer Pranay Singh said that accounts were flagged by searching for words such as “America” and “God.”
In one case Twitter censored the pro-life group Live Action’s ads because the “advertisements violated the company’s policy against ‘inflammatory or provocative content which is likely to evoke a strong negative reaction’.” Yet it does not censor Planned Parenthood.
Facebook’s trending feed has been hiding conservative topics. A 2016 report described claims by former employees that the site’s “news curators had been instructed to hide conservative content from the ‘trending’ section, which supposedly only features news users find compelling. Topics that had been blacklisted included Mitt Romney, the conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) and Rand Paul. On the other hand, the term ‘Black Lives Matter’ had also been placed into the trending section even though it was not actually trending.”
“Facebook censorship is nothing new. The company has adopted a standard of apologizing for most of the instances where it restricts or removes content, but only after a viral outrage….The site is enormous and conservative complaints are common.” It also removed posts from Chick-fil-A and Mike Huckabee in 2012, later recanting and apologized, stating the posts were “mistakenly blocked.”
Google search aids Democrats. “Google and YouTube’s corporate chairman Eric Schmidt has assisted Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The company’s search engine had deployed a similar bias in favor of Democrats.” The liberal website Slate also found bias in Google results that favored Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in the 2016 election. “Democrats had, on average, seven favorable search results in those top 10, whereas GOP candidates had only 5.9,” according to Slate. It also found that among the first 10 Google results, the first results were more favorable toward Democrats than for Republicans.
The report on Google concludes, “So far, Google shows no signs of removing bias from its algorithms. If anything, the search engine seems to be gearing up to inject even more.”
YouTube is shutting down conservative videos. YouTube, part of Google, has been “shutting down conservative channels ‘by mistake’ [and] removing videos that promote right-wing political views….The site’s very own YouTube page and Twitter account celebrate progressive attitudes, including uploading videos about ‘inspiring’ gay and trans people and sharing the platform’s support for DACA.”
A former YouTube recruiter claimed the company “engaged in diversity quotas in hiring and told recruiters to ‘purge’ all applicants who were not female, black and Hispanic and to cancel their interviews.”
Of course, if you’ve been following any of this the MRC report is unremarkable — your gut has already told you what we suspected all along. However, if you are new to this, or would just like some bedtime reading that is guaranteed to keep you up — and aggravated — check out the full report. You can find it at the Media Research Center’s website: https://www.mrc.org/.