Edited by: TJVNews.com
Ever since such social media platforms as Facebook and Twitter began to take heat for blatantly censoring politically conservative views and other perspectives that they deem inappropriate, many have spoken out about the cognitive war on diversity.
On Wednesday, the New York Post reported that Rupert Murdoch, the Australian billionaire businessman and owner of News Corp (which owns the New York Post as well as other media outlets) took issue with “Big Tech” and its censorship policies that are designed to silence dissent and inhibit intellectual discourse. He specifically leveled criticism against Facebook and Google for their heavy handed policies in quashing expression of conservative views.
In remarks to shareholders Murdoch said, “For many years, our company has been leading the global debate about Big Digital. What we have seen in the past few weeks about the practices at Facebook and Google surely reinforces the need for significant reform. There is no doubt that Facebook employees try to silence conservative voices, and a quick Google News search on most contemporary topics often reveals a similar pattern of selectivity — or, to be blunt, censorship.”
The Post was a victim of censorship last year when Twitter made the decision to shutter the Post’s account and silence the paper because they did not agree with a story the publication ran on the business ventures of Hunter Biden and efforts that the president’s son made to create a financial windfall through his family’s political connections in China.
Robert Thomson, News Corp.’s CEO, said the company opposed “cancel culture designed to silence diverse voices,” according to the Post report.
“As Rupert mentioned, there’s obvious censorship, as was experienced at the New York Post, and the more subtle institutionalized censorship in Big Digital,” he said. “It’s a confluence of the institutional, the technological, the social and political, and it is important that we stand firm against that morbific movement to mute.”
This is not the first time that pushback against Big Tech has taken place. The Post reported that just last month Texas led a group of states in filing a lawsuit against Google on claims that the web search engine controls the buy and sell side of top brokerage houses in the online advertising market and takes a 22 percent to 42 percent cut of US ad spending that passes through its systems.
In addition, the Post has reported that the lawsuit also provides details Google and Facebook attempting to preserve Google’s dominant position in the online ad space.
The Post reported that “court papers said Google made “an unlawful agreement” to give Facebook “information, speed, and other advantages” in Google-run ad auctions in exchange for the social network backing down from competitive threats against the firm.”
Commenting on this, Murdoch said that the alleged plot cooked up by Facebook and Google on ad tech as discussed in the lawsuit was “extraordinary.”
Murdoch said, according to the Post report:: “Let us be very clear about the consequences of that digital ad market manipulation: Obviously, publishers have been materially damaged, but companies have also been overcharged for their advertising and consumers have thus paid too much for products.”
Murdoch added that there’s a “fundamental need for algorithmic transparency” by the tech behemoths. Algorithms are subjective and they can be manipulated by people to kill competition and damage other people, publishers and businesses.The idea falsely promoted by the platforms that algorithms are somehow objective and solely scientific is complete nonsense. Algorithms are subjective and they can be manipulated by people to kill competition and damage other people, publishers and businesses.”
