“Big Tech is an enemy of the American people.”
That’s not me making this claim. It’s not Donald Trump. It’s not even Steve Bannon.
It’s the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“The think tank announced this week “that it is joining the Free Speech Alliance, a coalition of more than 90 conservative organizations working together to ensure conservatives’ free speech online and to hold tech companies accountable when they undermine it.”
The only thing I would say about that statement is that it underestimates the extent of Big Tech’s undermining of free speech. They undermine it every day of the week. They undermine it twice on Sunday. They undermine it more than a billion times a second. They couldn’t possibly undermine it any more than they do. They undermine it every chance they get.
Worse yet, they undermine freedom of speech and freedom of the press in America as much as humanly possible. And that’s saying a lot.
But I don’t expect many people to get this idea like I do.
I’ve been screaming from the rafters since 2017 about it. It caused me so much anxiety that it gave me five strokes – the last one being a major one.
It cost me so much lost revenue in that period that, from 2016 through 2022, I can conservatively estimate it at $100 million.
That’s how much this news site, WND.com, been devalued, demonetized and dehumanized in the last several years.
That’s what countless other conservative, Christian news sites have experienced.
But I coexisted with Google, Amazon, Facebook and the rest through most of the history of the internet – almost 20 years. Perhaps I’m a slow learner. We at WND were doing all right. We were growing. We were making a real difference. We weren’t being compromised. We weren’t being blackballed. We weren’t being canceled.
All of that ended in 2016.
Why?
Because we took a strong stand for one presidential candidate – perhaps stronger than any stand we had ever taken: Donald J. Trump. In America, we had that right, and everyone knew it – but Google, Amazon, Facebook and the rest began denying that right. It’s just that simple.
They didn’t care what I said about them, like when I called Google “evil” years before. Amazon didn’t smear or not order the books I published or the videos I made before 2016. Facebook didn’t restrict the reach to readers we’d developed through our use of the social site before 2016.
That’s because in 2016 we were playing for all the marbles – the presidency of the United States. And we won.
Here’s what Heritage President Kevin Roberts said in announcing his decision to join the coalition: “Big Tech is an enemy of the American people. They are weaponizing unprecedented power and influence to silence Americans, undermine freedom, and fundamentally reshape our society. It’s time for conservatives to unite and push back, and that’s why Heritage is joining the Free Speech Alliance. I am so proud to join this effort, led by Brent Bozell and the Media Research Center, who have done so much for the cause of freedom in this country. We will only win this fight against Big Tech if we work as one, and make clear the truth of what more and more Americans are learning every day — Big Tech is not a force for good, and that it is time for policymakers at the state and federal levels to implement aggressive reforms that rein in Big Tech’s influence and constrain its ability to unduly impact our republic. I look forward to the victories we will win together.”
What did it take to drive the august Heritage Foundation to reach this critical decision?
- In February, YouTube censored a video posted to The Daily Signal’s YouTube channel in which Virginia parent Merianne Jensen criticized unscientific and harmful school mask mandates, claiming it “violated” the platform’s “COVID-19 medical misinformation policy.” (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news site.)
- Last year, Amazon removed paid ads promoting a book by Heritage senior fellow Mike Gonzalez titled, “BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution,” because content that “revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics is not permitted.” After a public pressure campaign, Amazon reversed itself and restored the ads.
- In 2020, one of Heritage’s YouTube videos on gender dysphoria was censored by the company, while in 2019, The Daily Signal reported that YouTube had also removed a similar video on its YouTube channel.
- And in early 2019, then-Heritage President Kay C. James was invited to be a member of Google’s new AI board, only for Google to dissolve the board after an outcry from company employees that James, a conservative, was asked to be on the board.
I like what Kevin Roberts said and welcome Heritage Foundation to the fight, the war for the First Amendment and for everything else needed to make America FREE again.
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