Fettering Social Media

A government would try to achieve total control over our life through its might and muscle is the traditional notion of totalitarianism. Today, we may not have such despotism but we do essentially have totalitarian forces in the world in the form of these large tech companies. But guess what? They didn't use any might and muscle on us. We voluntarily opted for this arrangement. And we live in a world today in which these tech giants have a level of control and an ability to manipulate us that Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini could only have dreamed of. The more rope we give them, the sooner they can hang us all.

The internet, especially social media, has become one of the primary places for people to exchange viewpoints and ideas. Social media is where a considerable part of the current national conversation takes place.

Favouring one kind of political speech over another by the current media giants certainly skews the national political conversation in a lopsided way that conflicts with basic principles of democratic freedom of speech and what presumably should be the obligations of virtual monopolies.

If the big social media companies such as Google, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, choose what to publish and what not to publish, they should be subject to the same licensing and requirements as customary media organizations like press and TV.

The apparent leftist bias, however, not only shows itself in the suppression of conservative speech on websites of social media giants. Censorship and selective presentation of speech by such big tech companies has led to some unfortunate and unsavoury political and social consequences.

Produced by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer and directed by M.A. Taylor, a new documentary, "The Creepy Line," is revealing the way in which the major technology companies Google and Facebook manipulate consumers through the collection of users' data. Shedding light on current controversies surrounding privacy and political bias, the film argues that even the most intelligent people among us are serving as unwitting pawns in a power grab, enabled by mathematical algorithms, without our being aware of it.

Censuring of Social Media by various national Governments has already begun. Even the European Union is seized of the subject. It is quite likely that some form of regulation of Social Media will follow.

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