Big news in the new world of Instant Informational Technology ruled by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and his humongous corporation, Facebook. He’s being charged by Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) for making “materially false statements” to Congress, while under oath back in 2018. In legalese, that’s called “lying.” During his testimony he claimed that there was no basis for charges that his company or his employees engaged in any bias against conservative speech, persons, policies or politics. Mark Z also emphatically denied that his company “censored and suppressed” content that was in support of President Trump, his policies or other Republican office holders. Tell that to the thousands of Facebook users who have been “punished” by having their accounts terminated or closed for a period or permanently as penalty for passing on their conservative viewpoints to others.
However this attempt by the Congressman turns out, it puts the spotlight on the awesome, incredible power that groups such as Facebook, Google and Twitter have over the thought processes of people worldwide. Years back we actually read the news. Newspapers flourished. NYC had at least ten major ones, all under different managements having different views on politics, entertainment and sports. Today the print papers are dying out, being replaced by the few giants of information technology. They control the news, ideas, our thought processes and what they feed us is accepted as fact by so many who are basically too lazy to corroborate what they absorb from their computer or cell phone screens.
At the onset of the birth of these giants, we marveled at the speed and ease of how information was transmitted to us. No need to wait for the morning paper. Just flick on your phone and learn what your friends are saying, what’s happening in China or in the sports world. But these giant corporations slowly took over the content of what was “acceptable” to them politically and ideologically. Progressives such as Zuckerberg controlled the mindset of what was permitted to send out. His group censored what was considered by many of his users as their free speech. Many thousands, if not millions of Facebookers have been punished or censored for their conservative messages.
Let’s see how the Attorney General handles this case against a billionaire entrepreneur and his giant corporation and hopefully, others. But don’t look to the New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times, The Chicago Tribune, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, NPR, PBS or most of the other publications and media outlets to push this case to their front pages or prime news time slots. They all abide by the same principles of political censorship as does Facebook. Birds of a feather……
