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Andre M. Chang / Zuma Press
The academic establishment and progressive press want you to know two things: First, conservative claims of social media bias are false. As the police pinpoint content from Silicon Valley, their decisions are miraculously left completely unaffected by ideological preferences.
Second, there is an urgent need for a much broader crackdown on political speech, which may be led by the Biden government and which requires the creation of new government agencies. In other words, all this conservative oppression that isn’t happening? We need more of it.
New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights published one short This week this is being expanded in the press titled “False Accusation: The Unsubstantiated Claim That Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives”. It is argued that “some conservatives believe that if it is actually singled out, its content will be suppressed on party political grounds because it violates neutral platform rules.”
That is sometimes true, but the report does not remotely prove that it always does. What about when?
and
Trying to suppress a New York Post story about Hunter Biden ahead of the 2020 election? Even the report admits that “the question of whether social media companies have an anti-conservative tendency cannot be conclusively answered”.
This does not prevent the authors from blatantly claiming that “the assertion of the anti-conservative animus is itself a form of disinformation”. It’s in part perpetuated because “it appeals to the same conspiratorial mindset that fostered the QAnon movement”.
Got it? Anyone who argues that social media moderation has a progressive bias is spreading disinformation and may be drawn to a bizarre cult. And remember, disinformation is against the rules – which, in turn, are neutral.
State control is, of course, one of the solutions to the non-problem of progressive bias. The NYU report recommends that “the federal government. . . Hit Facebook, Google, and Twitter to improve content policies and work with these companies on enforcement. This political repression – a neutral, government-backed content policy – could “be enforced by a new Digital Regulatory Agency”.
As we develop new entities for voice control, the
offers another idea. Experts recommend “that the Biden government set up an inter-agency task force to combat disinformation and domestic extremism, led by something like a” reality tsar “,” the beacon of progressive tolerance aversion.
If disinformation (or at least disinformation that is not useful to the Biden administration) spreads, the Times said “a centralized task force could coordinate a single strategic response” and involve the technical platforms. That “could be the tip of the spear for the reaction of the federal government to the crisis of reality.”
Government as “tip of the spear” against political speech? Imagine if
had swum this.
Intellectuals don’t just want the Biden administration to promote progressive politics. They suggest that the government should oversee the flow of ideas and take the authority to define reality for itself. So bring the truth commissions with you. And if a political minority complains that the Ministry of Truth is biased, don’t worry – the Reality Czar can handle such disinformation quickly.
Main Street: “Trump tests the norms of objectivity in journalism,” said the New York Times in 2016. Four years later, an update to press coverage: Joe Biden must never be asked a tough question. Image: Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images
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Published in the print edition of February 4, 2021.
