Big Tech and The Big Parties

Big Tech and the big parties have had a rocky relationship the last couple of years. From the platforms becoming more invasive, to the shadow ban phenomenon (real or perceived it has been a common complaint), to tighter and tighter content controls and ‘fact-checker’ warnings of dubious quality… *cough* They fact check The Babylon Bee *cough cough*

Well, as is common when someone is currently playing the field and not at bat, a party wants to complain about the limitations or rules of social media tech… without really understanding those rules. A great many ‘shadow bans’ were algorithmic updates that resulted in traffic drops as the new program relearned what the old ones knew already. We know updates don’t always go smoothly… hell they rarely go smoothly.

But leave it to the field team to complain that the team at bat is biased and getting special treatment from their pet media agencies and then we will see it all again when the teams flip positions and red team is back at bat with blue team in the field… it all gets so tedious sometimes, but here is TechDirt.

From TechDirt,

from the sad-state-of-affairs dept

The Republican Party that once claimed to be the party of keeping government out of business and that actions have consequences has moved far, far beyond that. These days, it’s a parody of everything it once derided. Take a look at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s newly announced Framework to Stop the Bias and Check Big Tech. Even from the naming you can see quite clearly ridiculous victim-playing. There remains no evidence of any “anti-conservative bias” in social media content moderation. It is true that some Republican supporters have faced moderation… for breaking the rules. Just as some non-Republicans have faced moderation for those same reasons. It’s just that these Republicans — with no other fundamental principles to go on — have tried to turn basic content moderation for policy breaking into a whiny victimhood.

…

Just days before the 2018 primary election, Google search results for “California Republicans” identified our ideology as “Nazism.” At the same time, conservatives like Devin Nunes and Donald Trump Jr. were shadow banned on Twitter. For pro-life groups like Live Action and others, the discrimination wasn’t subtle at all. Since then, the examples of conservative censorship and bias across internet platforms has proliferated. Each one of you are all too familiar with how Big Tech and its overwhelmingly liberal executives want to set the agenda and silence conservatives.

Of course, each of those has a story behind them and none of them are presented accurately. Note that McCarthy doesn’t bother to explore why any of the above happened (if they happened — Twitter doesn’t engage in “shadow banning” so that’s just misleading claptrap). No one at social media companies wants to “silence conservatives.” Again, most of the evidence suggests the exact opposite. But the fact is that if you violate policies — including by spreading dangerous disinformation about, say, health or elections — you might get kicked off.

That should be a policy that actual “conservatives” support. It’s about the rights of private property owners to choose not to do business with those who are disruptive — and for those being disruptive to face the consequences of their own actions. That seems like the kinds of things that conservatives used to insist they support.