Free Speech

A bombshell story released by the New York Times attacks the platform for allowing conservatives to have a voice. In a critical piece headlined, “Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis,” reporters Sheera Frenkel, Nicholas Confessore, Cecilia Kang, Matthew Rosenberg and Jack Nicas wrote of Facebook’s perceived power moves against its liberal critics.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has butted heads with other big tech CEOs over tax policy. Now he wants big tech regulated. Benioff doubled down on his recent critique of Facebook being as dangerously addictive as cigarettes, suggesting that it must be regulated to make sure it serves the public good.

Censoring political opinions as “hate speech” has made its way to Instagram. Mimi Hecht, a business owner on Instagram, posted several statements on her Instagram story after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pennsylvania.  

Facebook seems very selective about disciplining users that violate its policies. Fox News is boycotting Twitter for allowing a violent antifa group to dox and threaten host Tucker Carlson

Facebook will permit countries in European unprecedented level of access to how it controls content. French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that in 2019, French regulators will be given access to Facebook’s content moderation process and allowed to study its attempts to control “hate speech.”

Google has been under fire for complying with foreign governments’ totalitarian policies. In an New York Times interview, Google CEO Sundar Pichai tried to combat internal and external backlash against the company’s accomodations to China’s communist government by saying "we are censoring search results because we're complying with the law."

That Silicon Valley refuses to support conservative ideas is well known, but some firms won’t countenance their employees donating to conservative causes and candidates. Just ask Facebook. In a congressional hearing in April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg referenced an employee who was fired, calling it “inappropriate to address.” He denied that the termination was politically motivated.

The French government and U.S. tech giants are pushing for a worldwide initiative to regulate the internet — including the issue of hate speech. The new declaration from the French government titled the “Paris Call For Trust and Security in Cyberspace,” is part of an international effort to crack down on cyber attacks, foreign interference, and hate speech, according to the organization that…

Twitter has let its favoritism of the left go too far -- and Fox News is striking back. Smash Racism DC, a branch of antifa, attacked Tucker Carlson’s house, reportedly threatened his wife, and doxed Carlson and his family on Twitter on Thursday, November 8.  

Is YouTube safe for your children? 61 percent of users claimed their children have encountered unsafe/unsuitable content there, according to recent PEW Research studies.

There seems to be no limit to the offenses allowed certain antifa groups on Twitter and Facebook. SmashRacism DC, an antifa group in the Washington D.C. area, threatened Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and his wife and 4 children on November 7, 2018.

Tech in Silicon Valley has an increasingly troubled relationship with free speech. Tech writer and former editor Jason Pontin recently gained attention because he was quoted no less than nine times in Google’s leaked “The Good Censor” memo.

Facebook seems to be fine with human rights violations in South Sudan occuring on its platform. In South Sudan, according to Voice of America News, an online auction was being held for marriage rights to a 16 year old girl.

Silicon Valley and the tech world are decidedly left-wing. But the echo chamber they’ve created carries over into tech journalism.The executive editor of popular tech magazine The Verge is no different.