White House Drafts Order to Look into Google, Facebook Practices

Personally, I'm more than happy to keep handing out rope to the bubble makers. Corp's are made of people.

Almost invariably, they face backlash for opinions on gay marriage, trans issues, immigrants, and race or gender discrimination.

Do you think criticism of Damore would have been as fervent if he circulated a memo calling for deregulation and tax cuts?

Don’t muddle the waters by mixing up opposition to conservative economic or foreign policy with opposition to racial and gender equality and tolerance of LGBTQ.

Identity politics sets people afire far more than abstract economics for precisely the reason that it is personal and often something that’s a fact of your birth or upbringing which is not a choice.

These companies were able to grow to the size they are because of safe harbor. The idea behind safe harbor was that it was for the public good IF the platforms stayed neutral.

If you are a progressive, you can openly talk about your political views at these companies, but if you are are a Trump supporter or a conservative you have to be underground or face being purged. This company ideology has made it's way into the products that they offer with Twitter and Facebook and Google banning accounts, shadow banning results etc. based on subjective criteria. In the mobile space for example, both Google and Apple can effectively shut you down by banning you from the app stores.

The lack of trust busting finally bit the republicans in the butt which is why their acting, but fixing this is a good thing. As much as this may allow some people with ideas I find extremely repulsive to spread those ideas, the alternative is a group of people who are un-accountable to the public filtering those views in ways that are very difficult for the average person to detect. That is giving way too much power to a select group of people. As history has shown power corrupts which is why we need to the checks and balances. Before Citizens United there was another check and balance in the system because that bias would have been considered an "in kind" political donation.

From a startup perspective this is also a good thing because in certain verticals these big players have the ability to squash upstarts, buy out their staff etc..

In the same way that consumer boycotts against advertisers got Fox News to censor some of its pundits.

PayPal just banned Alex Jones, you think this is because the rank and file progressive employees just decided to do it, or because they received massive numbers of public complaints?

There’s a huge difference between employee political views and product algorithms, and the idea conservatives don’t seem to understand that the general public is targeting companies with pressure campaigns against their ideology in much the same way religious groups used to get TV censored for criticism of religious or some mild sexuality.

Conservatives are not unique in this. Progressive channels on YouTube have been censored because of complaints that videos of civilian deaths caused by US military or anti terrorist videos were promoting violence.

Venezuela’s state TV which was promoting propaganda got censored at one point and a lot of progressives got really mad.

If you’re preaching white supremacy wrapped in a nice dog whistle, don’t be surprised a flood of public complaints and threats of boycotts against advertisers get your content taken down.

That’s how political action always worked, it’s how a lot of civil rights movements got TV to change what images they promoted.

There are serious black conservatives. Tim Scott, for instance. Michael Steele. Crystal Wright, maybe. Find one of them being called a "white nationalist", rather than trying to read tea leaves out of the reactions to an Internet troll.