Tech Censorship Is Accelerating
By: The Editorial Board (WSJ)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Now that voters have turned the authoritarian GOP out of the executive branch and Congress, Americans should expect the open exchange of ideas to flourish again. Right?
Consider two events Monday. First, the conservative scholar Ryan Anderson announced that Amazon had purged his 2018 book, "When Harry Became Sally," from its web store. The book criticizes recent progressive ideas about gender and especially the wisdom of sex-change procedures in children.
Amazon declined comment on the reasons for the ban, but comment is hardly needed. The tech companies have grown increasingly open about their ideological censorship.
Also on Monday, two Congressional Democrats wrote a stern letter to CEO Jeff Bezos about Amazon's role in politics. If you took seriously the party's promises to defend "democratic norms," you might expect Democratic politicians would express concern about the world's third-largest company by market capitalization trying to suppress a book on a contested political issue.
But the letter is a demand for more ideological censorship. "Our country's public discourse is plagued by misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies," write Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney. They quote a claim that right-wing media is "much more susceptible," and demand to know why Amazon's Fire TV carries certain conservative programs.
The letter is also addressed to the CEOs of Apple , Google and cable companies. It’s part of a campaign to engineer a more pliant media through coercion of the corporations that distribute information. That point will be pressed in a Wednesday hearing on “Disinformation and Extremism in the Media” in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The House also released a memorandum ahead of the hearing that appears to give orders to mainstream news sources. “Despite criticism, many traditional media outlets continue to allow for the disinformation in an attempt to follow journalistic standards and present multiple viewpoints on a news story,” the Committee avers. Got that, newspaper editors? Please adjust your coverage to the liking of Congressional Democrats.
Corporate media censorship, such as Amazon’s scrubbing of a heretical book, is accelerating. And government is right alongside, pushing for censorship with increasing force.
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The topic is the media's ideological censorship.
I will not be commenting nor moderating
The Book group has a group moderator
So get someone else to publish and distribute it. Free market motherfuckers.
So apparently, at the same time Republican's are decrying big government and too many regulations, they want government to play big brother to the tech/media companies and regulate what those companies are allowed to do.
Apparently so.
I know right? They whine constantly about “socialism” (of course they don’t actually understand the concept to begin with) and then essentially start demanding that the government start dictating the means of production and distribution for businesses.
But I guess having no logical consistency is just a side of effect of an ideology that is nothing more than “own the libs”.
True. That's been demonstrated time and again, especially when TiG tried to explain it. Somehow, it just never sinks in.
Lol oh TiG, still talks to them as though there is an honest conversation to be had.
Well, TiG is honest. And logical. Too bad others do not always reciprocate.
Apparently it is only SOCIALISM if the Democrats want something.
This isn't really about a book...
It never was. It’s about conservatives getting upset that the rest of us cannot be forced to give them a platform. It is that uncontrollable persecution complex.
Yep.
My point though is this article should not actually be in the book group as it is not about the book itself.
Just another opportunity to 'own or piss off the libs'
Probably right, should be labeled as politics or whining.
Nor, I venture, has the seeder 'finished' reading the book that the seed is whining about.
That seems to be the practice here, seeding other's 'reviews' of book you haven't read and now just seeding an article whining about a RW author's book being taken off of Amazon's 'shelves'.