“We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.” —John Adams (1797)

The Democrats’ House Antitrust Subcommittee released a summary report on its 16-month “inquiry” into BIG Tech companies — including search and social media giants Google and Facebook, and online retailers Amazon and Apple. Antitrust laws are federal and state statutes designed to prevent market-crushing concentration of economic monopolies. There is no question that these companies are marketplace monopolies.

But the first question about this Demo-controlled House investigation: Why would the Democrat Party take on companies that are headed by their wealthiest leftist benefactors, and whose bias strongly favors their leftist political agenda? Fact is, if Demos are biting the hand that feeds them, then the “bite” is a nibble intended to head off any action that might really interrupt the feeding.

The real feeding is not in campaign donations, but in election rigging – and the social and search media platforms have rigged the 2020 election.

Consider the abject bias of the social media blackout of the Biden/ChiCom corruption, which tied Joe Biden directly to a pay-for-play scheme to sell Biden influence in return for Red China payoffs.

To put this corruption blackout into perspective, this would be tantamount to the Washington Post covering up Watergate.

While Democrat Party principals spent much of President Donald Trump’s first term pretending the Russians rigged the 2016 election, the real existential threat to free and fair elections represented by social and search media bias, is proving to be equally as influential as the Demos’ Leftmedia propagandists — and that bias emerged in 2016 virtually unnoticed.

It will be one of the biggest election determinants of 2020 – almost as insidious as the Demos’ fraudulent bulk-mail balloting charade in many key electoral states.

Don’t confuse economic monopolies with monopolies on the marketplace of ideas — particularly the search and social media opinion shapers.

Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms, controlled by billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg, have a virtual market lock on opinion-shaping manipulation — and they are using that lock to suppress conservative speech and promote leftist ideologues and ideologies. Their monopoly on ideas is a huge threat to the future of American Liberty.

In August, when Barack Obama told his Democratic National Convention lemmings, “Do not let them take away your power — don’t let them take away your democracy,” he was referring to Republicans. More specifically, he was referring to Republican efforts to thwart the Demos’ voter fraud plans, which include carpet-bombing their own mailboxes with ballots and refusing to require voter IDs.

In other words, fighting back against Demo voter fraud constitutes “taking away your power,” and insisting on free and fair elections is tantamount to “taking away your democracy.”

Behind the curtain of all this rancor, though, is a subtler yet much greater threat to our elections than systemic Demo voter fraud. In fact, it’s a threat designed to give socialist Democrats perpetual control of government.

Leftist BIG Tech social media bias manifests primarily as selective censoring of conservative content with algorithms that actively suppress whatever the leftist tech giants want to suppress — at the proverbial turn of a data-selection switch.

An algorithm is a deliberate data-management process that is designed to solve a problem. In this case, the “problem” is conservative content itself — including news, commentary, and imagery. Big Tech’s leftist search and social media switches have emerged as the most effective way to manage that problem, and they are thus a powerful determinant in national elections.

Recall last year’s congressional testimony of Dr. Robert Epstein, former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today and a Harvard-educated senior research psychologist with the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (IBRTA). In his testimony about search media, primarily Google, Dr. Epstein admitted, “I am not a conservative,” but he advocates for “a free and fair election more than I have any kind of allegiance to a candidate or a party.”

Epstein was asked by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) if “Google is, through biased search results, manipulating voters in a way they are not aware of.”

Epstein replied, “On a massive scale.”

IBRTA’s research, said Epstein, revealed that Google’s biased search results provided 2.6 million votes to Clinton in 2016, but clarified, “That 2.6 million is a rock-bottom minimum. The range is between 2.6 and 10.4 million.”

He also concluded that in the crucial 2018 midterm elections, Google’s “Go Vote” reminder shifted “between 800,000 and 4.6 million more votes.”

Regarding this year’s election, he concluded: “All of these companies are going to go all out. And the methods that they’re using are invisible, they’re subliminal, they’re more powerful than most any effects I’ve ever seen in the behavioral sciences, and I’ve been in the behavioral sciences for almost 40 years. In 2020 — if all these companies are supporting the same candidate — there are 15 million votes on the line that can be shifted without people’s knowledge and without leaving a paper trail for authorities to trace.”

Put another way, the Hispanic voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election was estimated to be between 13.1 and 14.7 million. Imagine doubling that number with only Democrats. But it’s actually worse than that. The 15 million votes that Epstein is talking about aren’t merely being added to the vote total; many are being manipulated to move from one side to the other, from Republican to Democrat, so the effect is even more powerful.

As for Facebook, Cruz asked, “A handful of Silicon Valley billionaires and giant corporations are able to spend millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars collectively, massively influencing the results of elections?”

Epstein replied, “Senator, with respect, I must correct you. If Mark Zuckerberg chooses to send out a ‘Go Vote’ reminder just to Democrats on Election Day, that doesn’t cost him a dime.”

Regarding Facebook’s use of algorithms to ensure bias, Epstein wrote, “The dangers in allowing big technology companies to decide which news stories are legitimate” gives them the ability to silence conservative media.

Facebook rebuffed assertions about its abject bias with an internal “bias audit” that, laughably, determined it was not biased.

Even more laughably, one of Zuckerberg’s emissaries declared that Facebook favors “right-wing populism” because it appeals to “an incredibly strong, primitive emotion.” Actually, emotionally incontinent white-privileged suburbanites advocating leftist statism are the primary benefactors of the Democrat Party.

Zuckerberg’s apologist added, “If you’re a far-left partisan, then why can’t you fight fire with fire? … All center-left campaigners and politicians always ask themselves, ‘Why can’t [we] seem to rile their supporters as much as right-wing populists have?’”

That “fight fire with fire” assertion coincided with months of leftist burning, looting, and murdering in major urban centers — and the anarchists use social media to organize their “peaceful protests.”

In the same breath, he declared that Facebook is neutral in its use of algorithms to suppress speech. That is a lie and our internal social media data proves that beyond any reasonable doubt.

Here is my question for Zuckerberg: Why, after record growth in recent years, has our Patriot Post traffic on Facebook suddenly and precipitously dropped by more than 80%? We can tie this drop to the day Facebook’s manipulation of algorithms began suppressing the organic reach of our content, also known as “shadow banning.” This isn’t a matter of speculation; it’s a matter of fact. We were on a trajectory to have millions of followers on Facebook, but that trajectory has stalled because one of Zuckerberg’s minions flipped a political-preference switch.

This is happening to grassroots conservative sites every day with impunity. The most recent case being our friend Mark Levin, but at least Facebook had the courtesy of notifying him that his content was being shadow banned for “false news” — in other words commentary that does not fit with Zuckerberg’s political views.

Just this week, Facebook and Twitter blacked out user references to a New York Post story connecting Hunter and Joe Biden in a quid pro quo with corrupt Ukraine officials. As I have noted previously, the Democrats attempted to impeach Donald Trump for what Joe Biden actually did in a shady influence scam with Ukrainian officials.

Recall that Biden has repeatedly claimed, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” regarding the Ukraine and Chinese dealings which created a windfall of millions of dollars for Hunter Biden. (Watch Biden’s denial.) When Joe Biden was asked why his son received an $80,000-per-month check for sitting on the board of corrupt Ukrainian oil company, Burisma – at the same time the then-VP was in charge of our policy in Ukraine, he responded, “‘Cause he’s a very bright guy.”

Right.

Twitter also suspended the White House Press Secretary account and the Trump campaign account for daring to mention the Post story.

The chorus of whistleblowers emerging from these Orwellian tech giants is growing. Former Google engineer Kevin Cernekee insists that Google is preparing to “make sure Trump loses in 2020.”

A devastating documentary exposé, primarily about Facebook, has just been released. A host of former Silicon Valley executive defectors are featured in “The Social Dilemma” (see the Netflix trailer). The film provides a brutal peek at the disgusting underbelly of social and search media manipulation. It reveals how social media platforms are undermining our elections, and, moreover, our American culture.

A key figure in that documentary is Facebook’s former director of monetization, now-Moment CEO Tim Kendall. According to Kendall, “Extreme outcomes are the logical end conclusion if there is no action on social media reform during the increasing destabilization of civil society – the online tribalism that exacerbates the societal division.”

Kendall says: “It will take all of us coming together as a society to effectively address social media addiction and the dangerous incentives at the core of the attention-based business model of these companies. … The attention-based business model of social media companies is a threat to democracy. Full stop. We as users are attracted to content that entertains us and reinforces our views. 'Big Social,’ as I call it, knows this and presents information that will keep us coming back to their platforms. These corporate practices encourage online tribalism that exacerbates the societal division we see today amid unprecedented economic, climate, and public health turmoil.”

He concludes: “I think there are three things that need to change. First, until the financial incentives are removed these companies will continue to operate by creating social media addicts of its users. Second, we need better regulation—no industry, including tech, should be in the position to regulate themselves. Third, we need innovation to help people take back their lives from their devices.”

Predictably, Facebook responded to the documentary with a slick list of dezinformatsiya, but Zuckerberg knows their gross manipulation in the marketplace of ideas has been exposed.

The last frontier of free speech is the web — but Zuckerberg and other leftists are effectively suppressing free speech on every search and social media platform. In the real world, we are entitled to confront an accuser in order to seek justice. In the social media world of ‘fact-checkers,’ there is no such justice. Bias rules.

However, there are solutions — if not legislative, then legal. And that begins with limiting what these platforms aggregate in terms of user profiles. If a user can’t be profiled, then it greatly reduces that user’s vulnerability to manipulation.

Beyond the Demos’ antitrust ruse, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are contemplating antitrust actions against Google, Facebook, and other tech giants. But in the unlikely event any meaningful action is taken to diminish social media platform monopolies, addressing the user privacy and profiling issue is a much more direct path to undoing Zuckerberg’s monopoly on ideological profiling.

How to get that done?

Two years ago, I noted what Congress should do.

After Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony exposing his company’s unmitigated violation of user privacy, it became clear that when it comes to these violations — the collecting and marketing of individual profiles — a ubiquitous blanket “user agreement” is completely insufficient.

If Republicans and Democrats are serious about curbing the unmitigated power of social and search media platforms to influence elections, it must start with their unmitigated violation of user privacy.

Congress has the authority to protect consumer privacy through legislation, and in the case of Facebook, Google and other aggregators of private data (which should be classified as private property), that legislation should include explicit conditions regarding the collection and dissemination of such data. Congress should enact legislation requiring that social media and other aggregators of individual data be required to obtain specific and explicit user permissions for each and every collection and transfer of such data, prior to such collection or transfer. Violations of those conditions warrant enormously expensive fines.

The aggregators will, of course, argue about what constitutes “private” — and that the data they collect is not actually private. But by any reasonable definition, the individual data in question most certainly is private.

Will Congress take any action?

In his closing testimony regarding the political influence of search and social medial platforms, Robert Epstein declared, “If you were to examine the data I have been collecting over the past six and a half years, every one of you would put partisanship aside and collaborate to rein in the extraordinary power that Google and Facebook now wield with unabashed arrogance.”

Of course, leftist Democrats have no intention of putting aside the political windfall benefits of social media partisanship.

Imagine, if you will, what the American political landscape would look like if the mass and social media platforms were actually politically neutral. That landscape would take a seismic shift to the right.

That being said, if Democrats take the presidency and the Senate in 2020, all bets are off. Hidden by the shadow of their SCOTUS-packing plan is another insidious power-grabbing scheme: to pack the Senate by admitting both Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico as states. Doing so will provide Democrats with four additional Senate seats — and an assurance of perpetual control of the country for the foreseeable future, which will be solidified by search and social media manipulation.

Update: For the record, on behalf of Twitter’s disgraceful blackout, last week CEO Jack Dorsey admitted, “Our communication around our actions on the New York Post article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable. … Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix. Our goal is to attempt to add context, and now we have capabilities to do that.” Too little, too late.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

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