Social Media: Is Trump Right About Anti-Conservative Bias? You Bet He Is
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Social Media Bias: President Trump has criticized the major social media and web search sites, in particular Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter, for their anti-conservative bias. Is his critique valid? A controversial new report suggests the answer is yes.
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It was just last weekend that a study by GovPredict, a Silicon Valley political data research firm, found that over the last 14 years Alphabet employees gave 90% of their political donations , or $15.5 million, to Democrats. Republicans took in a mere $1.6 million.
Now comes a new study from GovPredict showing nearly the identical results for Amazon. Since 2006, the study says, Amazon employees gave 90% of their politcal donations to Democratic political action committees and, once again, just 10% to Republican PACs.,
Alphabet, the parent of Google, has roughly 76,000 employees while Amazon has more than a half-million. But the number of employees giving the money were in the hundreds, presumably mostly executive and senior manager level.
In Amazon's case, as PJMedia described it, "A whoppping 310 employees contributed to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, totaling $6610,805. Another 171 contributed to Barack Obama's campaigns, totaling $413,763. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) took third place, with $128,750 from 42 employees. Close behind her, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took in $106, 965 from 275 employees for his presidential campaign."
Preferring Socialist Over Republicans
Only one Republican candidate took in more than $50,000: Mitt Romney, who nabbed $62,400 in donations from 42 people. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, took in $39,000. And yes, Donald Trump did get some Amazon love: 42 employees gave him a grand total of $17,436.
Put another way, socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders raked in nearly half again as much as both Republican presidential nominees . So claims that the social media giants are politically neutral is a joke.
These are giant companies with highly politicized workforces that control most of the major access points to the global internet. Having a neutral, fair arbiter for possible disputes and for regulating use is absolutely vital.
Yet, neither company has a workforce that reflects America's political views.
As Trump recently claimed, "conservatives have been treated very unfairly" by Google and others and warned of an "antitrust situation." To show he means it, he's started tweeting with the hashtag #stopthebias.
Meanwhile, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch has already asked the Federal Trade Commission to look into possible antitrust violations on the part of Google. So the heat is on. A recent Media Research Center poll found 65% of conservatives believe the social media giants censor right-of-center views.
Repeated Bias
The fact is, Google, YouTube and Facebook have all shown repeated bias against conservative voices and web sites.
Google, for instance, used to attach fact-checks on conservative stories from leftist sites. It also tilted the results of searches towards left-wing politicians over conservatives. It even fired a computer tech, James Damore, merely for expressing a non-left opinion over the male-female wage gap.
Worse still, YouTube, a lucrative utility for many sites that seek to make money from their web presence, has "demonetized" conservative sites such as Prager University , whose informative and thought-provoking videos have nothing whatsoever to do with "alt-right" anything. Recent videos include such fare as "Why America Must Lead" and "Why Did America Fight the Korean War." For this, Prager U was kept from having ads on its videos.
Facebook, along with the rest of the far-left "mainstream" media, routinely shuns conservative stories on its news sites and aggressively limited "partisan" sites it doesn't like.
Social Media And Trump
Of course, there's Twitter, of which Trump is a master. It "shadow bans" those it doesn't like, limiting how many page views some sites receive without even telling them.
All of them work with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left group that aggressively declares right-of-center organizations as "hate groups." None of the major web giants, to our knowledge, works with a comparable conservative group such as, say, David Horowitz' Freedom Center.
It should be said, this is nothing new. The legacy media giants were perhaps just as biased as today's social media giants are today. But the reach the big city newspapers and the national newspaper chains was not nearly as great as today's social media.
A person today can tweet out a message, post a photo or a message on Instagram or YouTube, and be in millions of households within hours — the kind of instantaneous a reach that the old media moguls like Hearst and Pulitzer could only dream of.
That's why Trump's claims will ring true to many Americans. Even Americans who aren't conservative have a strong sense of fairness, and by any reasonable idea of fairness, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Twitter, YouTube and others discriminate against those they politically disagree with.
It's time for them to stop using their immense power to interfere in what John Stuart Mill called the marketplace of ideas, and let our democracy breathe.
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I love it, trumps says google is biased and up pops a an 'article' to support his claim despite it being a complete BS lie.
This article, is (predictably), fake news.
1) Even if it WAS true, these companies are privately owned, they are under no obligation to cater to one particular political ideology or another. They can express bias all they want to, it's completely legal.
2) Trump has given conservatives a very bad name and their 'numbers' are decreasing so there are fewer of them ON social media. Besides, social media is a very progressive platform.
3) Maybe google would have more positive hits on donny if he wasn't a lying asshole......every..........fucking.......day.
4) Do a little research on how the google search engine works, then maybe you'll understand why donny isn't always getting 'glowing hit results'.
5) Trump whines about google because he wants them to list only good things about him. So like the media, anyone that doesn't kiss his ass and bend over backwards to make him look good, he attacks them. The problem isn't with google, it's with trump who is just a POS, and the google results reflect that quite accurately.
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Trump is still trying to pass of the, "I am not the problem, it's everyone else that's the problem!!!". And as this article proves, there are actually people that buy it.
#sad
#deplorable
Trumpy blocked me on twitter, THAT is illegal.
Also... IBD is a far right wing OPINION website with mixed factual reporting. Nice try trying to pass this POS article off as factual. Might want to add "opinion" to the tags list.
so i suppose the seeder (and author) is against capitalism and letting companies run how they see fit ? seems like the seeder wants "equal outcomes" for everyone - which i hear is not what conservatives stand for....
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