Democratic National Committee openly pushing for more Big Tech censorship
By isabelle // 2022-04-25
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While calls to curb online censorship have been growing on the right, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is officially pushing for even more online censorship – which is not surprising when you consider that it helped them win the last election. A document recently published by the DNC entitled, “Recommendations for Combating Online Misinformation” has some very disturbing recommendations that some observers fear could jeopardize bipartisan Big Tech bills and casts doubt on the true goals of the Congressional Democrats backing these bills. For example, in their 14-point plan, they recommend tech companies “enforce rules on hate speech consistently and comprehensively,” enforce what they term a “comprehensive political misinformation policy”, and “promote authoritative news over highly engaging news in content algorithms.” One of the most alarming recommendations, however, is the one to “establish a policy against the distribution of hacked materials.” After all, this was the excuse that was used by Big Tech platforms like Twitter to suppress the New York Post’s bombshell story about Hunter Biden's laptop in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. The story exposed evidence from Hunter’s laptop that Joe Biden was aware of his son’s corrupt business dealings with Ukraine and that Hunter sold influence while his father was vice president. Twitter almost immediately blocked links to the expose and locked the accounts of people who shared it, including that of then-White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, on the false grounds that the story was based on “hacked” material. Now, some of the same outlets that conspired to suppress that story now admit it was indeed true – but the damage has already done. Polls have shown that the story could have swayed the election had the public been aware of it, illustrating the significant power that Big Tech censorship wields over our democracy. The DNC admitted in the document that it was partnering with Big Tech platforms to “combat platform manipulation and train our campaigns on how best to secure their accounts and protect their brands against disinformation.” They wrote: “Social media companies are ultimately responsible for combating abuse and disinformation on their systems, but as an interested party, we’ve compiled this comparative policy analysis to present social media companies with additional potential solutions.”

Big Tech censorship helps Democrats

The recommendations make it clear that the DNC is firmly in favor of censorship, despite some Democrats in the House and Senate sponsoring or cosponsoring more than a dozen bills related to social media and tech apps. In fact, some of the bills that appear to be pro-free speech on the surface could ultimately prove to be anti-free speech in practice. The Open App Markets Act, for example, will prevent a “covered company” from placing certain restrictions on apps unless it is deemed “necessary to achieve user privacy, security or digital safety.” Two of the bill’s cosponsors, Senators Richard Blumenthal and Amy Klobuchar, are Democrats who have claimed that online “misinformation” is dangerous – terminology that is often used to justify restricting free speech. The founder and president of the Internet Accountability Project, Mike Davis, told MRC Free Speech America that more free speech is the solution to misinformation. He said: “While leftists want to censor and de-platform those deemed problematic to their interests … A competition of ideas will lead to a more informed American public. Silencing one side’s political opposition leads down a dangerous road. In China, the communist government has complete control over news and information—this is the logical conclusion of the effort by so-called ‘progressives’ to censor those with whom they disagree.” Sources for this article include: BlacklistedNews.com TheIAP.org
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