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| Zuckerburg's plans to brainwash the masses faces opposition from Bannon. |
White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon is a man of big ideas and his next big one is to combat the liberal bias of internet companies like Facebook and Google by treating them as public utilities and monopolies. This would mean imposing tighter regulations on them, making it harder for them to behave in the partisan left-leaning way that they have in the past.
Bannon's intentions emerged after the tech-focused on-line mag The Intercept reported on the story, citing three anonymous sources that have reportedly discussed the issue with Bannon.
According to The Intercept:
"Silicon Valley’s liberal cultural politics puts it at odds occasionally with more conservative, rural Trump voters. Facebook was confronted by a backlash over its news curating during last year’s presidential campaign. With insiders claiming there was an anti-conservative bias, Facebook pulled its live team off the project."
Other means of slanting social media in a leftward direction include banning right-wingers on Facebook (usually for using the word "fag"), shadow banning popular right-wing pages so they get less views, and interfering with search results to show liberal and left-wing stories as the top stories on any issue.
If treated as public utilities, this sort of blatant bias would be a lot more difficult, allowing a true "market place of ideas" to emerge, in which Alt-Right ideas would clearly dominate.
Google and Facebook have become so dominant on the internet that they are clearly natural monopolies, meaning that Bannon's idea of regulating them or, alternatively, breaking them up into smaller companies, has broad support from industry insiders who believe in net neutrality.
The two companies account for more than 70% of the $73 billion spent each year on digital advertising and nearly 80% of all online referral traffic comes from Google and Facebook. This is not only highly profitable, but also gives these companies immense power and influence to control the political agenda, a clear and present dander to democracy.
