Political totalitarianism is coming to America, and it is being ushered in not by government thugs in jackboots but by progressive activists and their allies in Silicon Valley.
In a chilling oped published in The New York Times on July 14, Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, argued that so-called “hate speech” is the same thing as physical violence because it may possibly cause emotionally fragile individuals stress — and should be made illegal.
Thankfully, the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from following such advice, but online companies are taking it upon themselves to stamp-out so-called “hate speech,” strangling free speech and the free exchange of ideas in the process.
A number of troubling actions by internet companies — Google most prominent among them — are making it increasingly clear that some in Silicon Valley have proclaimed themselves defenders of the progressive, politically correct faith, and that those firms will silence any and all heretics who challenge those beliefs.
"Silicon Valley lives in a politically regressive, exclusive bubble. They are not aware of their own biases in how they talk, have a limited understanding of the philosophy behind free speech, and find it difficult empathizing with other points of view," said Aaron Ginn, co-founder of the Lincoln Network, a think tank that seeks to promote libertarian ideas in the tech industry.
But Google not only has difficulty empathizing with other points of view — it is also actively trying to suppress them.
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"Emmett says he personally witnessed efforts from leftists within Google to bias YouTube's algorithms to push anti-PC content off the platform's 'related videos' recommendations," Breitbart reported. "The software could just 'astroturf' your Related Videos section [an effort to hurt overall ratings], and you would be none the wiser," said Emmet.
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People familiar with the process have told reporters recently that YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, is also laboring to cleanse its platform of alternative voices that challenge the mainstream liberal narrative. The social media video-sharing site has in the past few months systematically demonetized videos of right-wing commenters and journalists, such as Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson and former Rebel Media reporter Lauren Southern.
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Unfortunately it's not just Google. On Thursday, Watson of InfoWars posted a YouTube video titled "I Won't Be Around Much Longer," in which he revealed that "they banned me on Facebook because of a video I posted 18 months ago," and went on to posit that if digital platforms continue at the current rate, Silicon Valley will have soon entirely purged all right-wing voices from mainstream social media.
But although social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are already known among conservatives for suppressing even mainstream right-wing voices, despite allowing controversial content from the far Left and even radical Islamists to remain online unmolested — non-social-media sites have also begun to target right-wing dissidents.
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More:
http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/silicon-valley-tightens-its-grip-on-free-speech/
