Facebook and Google increasingly influence Congress as the social media giants censor conservative and alternative voices, dominate the Internet, and violate Americans’ privacy.
Facebook announced on Thursday that they have banned several conservative personalities such as Infowars host Alex Jones, Infowars contributor and YouTube personality Paul Joseph Watson, journalist and activist Laura Loomer, and Milo Yiannopoulus. The social media giant also banned Louis Farrakhan from its platforms.
Facebook said that they banned these personalities because they were “dangerous.”
Amid calls for greater regulation of social media companies’ potential anticompetitive behavior, censorship of conservative and alternative voices, and privacy violations, Facebook and Google have remained at the top of Open Secret’s database of top spenders lobbying Congress.
So far in 2019, Facebook spent $3,400,000 and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, $3,530,00 in lobbying Congress. Alphabet also ranked as the eighth total highest spender in lobbying in 2018, spending $21,740,000, while Facebook spent $12,620,000.
Facebook’s influence has continued to rise over the years. In the early years of President Barack Obama, Facebook spent below one million dollars in 2008 and 2009. From 2011 to 2018, Facebook’s lobbying spending skyrocketed and reached historic highs in 2018, when they spent $12.6 million.
Facebook and Google’s dominance on the Internet has become increasingly apparent as Google has approximately 90 percent of web search traffic, whereas in digital advertising, Google and Facebook amount to nearly two-thirds of American digital ad spending, with Amazon at a “distant third” at under nine percent.
As Facebook and Google and other social media giants continue to increasingly censor and blacklist conservative and alternative voices, more and more conservative voices have called for addressing the social media giants’ dominance of the Internet. Facebook and Google’s influence in Congress also relates to political confrontations; during a hearing in December 2018, the then-ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee delivered a sharp rebuke of Republican accusations of Google’s political bias affecting its search engines, even though Google was his top donor.
With the bans of Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer and othersfrom Facebook and Instagram yesterday, for being what Mark Zuckerberg considers “dangerous,” those who promote non-establishment narratives online are wondering: who’s next, and where?
One thing we’ve learned over the past three years of ever-tightening social media censorship is that where one tech giant goes, the others often follow.
Just look at the mass-ban of Infowars that occurred last September. At the urging of CNNand others, one Silicon Valley company after another dropped the controversial independent media outlet from their platforms. First Apple, then Facebook, then Spotify, then YouTube, then Twitter — most of these in a 48-hour window.
It’s a tech censorship domino effect. Remember that these companies are beset by constant pressure from left-wing advocacy organizations, from the mainstream media, and from their own far-left employees to censor and blacklist the right. When one company buckles, those forces have the ammunition they need to force other companies to buckle too.
“Apple did something! Why aren’t we doing something too?”
That’s probably how the conversation went among Facebook employees in the window between Apple’s ban of Infowars and Facebook’s. Thus the domino effect began.
This time it’s Facebook raising the bar of censorship, with its introduction of politically motivated link-banning. Not only have they banned Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones’ personal account, but they’ve also promised to delete any links to Infowars that appear on the platform, and ban anyone who tries to post them too often.
This is a formula not just for banning high-profile political targets, but masses of their supporters as well. It’s a tool for culling the anti-establishment grassroots.
The second thing Facebook has done is set a public precedent for targeting individuals not just for alleged violations of the terms of service on their part, but also on the basis of their connections to banned figures.
According to the Verge, a Facebook representative explained that one factor in yesterday’s bans was the fact that the banned individuals had appeared in videos or praised people like Gavin McInnes and Tommy Robinson, who have previously been banned by the platform.
In other words, it’s not just posting links. If you praise the wrong person, pose for a selfie with them, or worse — appear in a video with them — you could be banned too.
This is censorship on a new scale, censorship Facebook-style. The platform’s slogan was once “connect the world” — now it’s using its knowledge of those connections to censor not just individuals, but entire social networks and movements.
Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson opened his show with a reaction to Facebook’s banning of so-called “dangerous” entities.
The Fox News Channel host offered a question to his viewers, which was as to where congressional leaders and the Trump administration were amid this “crackdown.”
“What about us? Who is standing up for us?” Carlson said. “Where are our leaders in Congress? Where is the White House? Nowhere. As long as big tech isn’t hassling them personally and directly, as long as their accounts remain open, they don’t seem to care.”
“They’re fools,” he continued. “Would any of these people get reelected in a country where left-wing tech companies control the terms of political debate? Can you really win a presidential election if Google opposes you? No, you can’t. Not a chance, not right now.
Without free speech, there is no democracy. It’s time to stop lying about that.”
The uber-liberal Trudeau government has again revised a report that is supposed to update Canadians on the major terrorist threats they face, by removing all references to Islamic extremism.
Global News While the report, first released in December, had initially identified attackers “inspired by violent Sunni Islamist ideology” as the main terrorist threat to Canada, that line has now been cut. All mentions of “Sunni” and “Shia” extremism were also taken out of the annual report, along with section headings on both types of terrorism.
The so-called Islamic State, Al Qaeda and their regional affiliates use terrorism to promote their versions of Sunni Islamist extremist ideology, while Hezbollah is a Shia extremist group.
Notice how Islam is not mentioned, except once (Daesh) in any of these main terror attacks/plots perpetrated by Muslims in Canada:
But Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told reporters Thursday he wanted the terrorist threat report to use language that “did not impugn or condemn an entire religion.”
The latest change was announced on Twitter and Facebook by Liberal MP Ruby Sahota, who wrote that she had worked with Goodale to “remove language” from the report.
“The report no longer contains the terms ‘Shia,’ and ‘Sunni,’” she wrote. “Words matter. Our agencies and departments must never equate any one community or entire religions with extremism.”
But in a blog post Wednesday, former Canadian Security Intelligence Service analyst Phil Gurski likened the government’s repeated second-guessing of the report to a comedy routine.
“To my mind this is just political correctness and electioneering gone mad,” wrote Gurski, who also worked at Public Safety Canada, which produced the threat report.“The inability to call a threat what it is makes it harder to identify and neutralize it.”
Mark of the Beast? Facebook Developing Cashless Payment System
According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is developing a cashless payment system with the help of several financial firms, including Mastercard.
Code-named Project Libra, the system will “reward” users for their activity on the platform, just like the Chinese social credit system.
The WSJ reports:
“The effort, should it succeed, threatens to upend the traditional, lucrative plumbing of e-commerce and would likely be the most mainstream application yet of cryptocurrency.”
As Facebook continues to gain favor with the Chinese government, the cashless system will likely be modeled after the Chinese social credit system that tracks citizens purchases. Australia is currently moving to assimilate with this system.
Leftist groups are pushing for Mastercard to cut service to conservatives and those who hold wrong political opinions.
Chase Bank has already banned Proud Boys member Enrique Tarrio. He was notified by Chase Bank that the bank will no longer service him.
Activist Laura Loomer was also suspended by Chase Bank.
These examples are a clear warning to everyone that centralized digital currencies and platforms can be used to shut down targeted groups or individuals.
Facebook has already shown that it has complete disregard for users privacy.
Should Facebook’s cashless payment system become a dominant force in our society, freedom is in grave danger.
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