Diversity of thought is more important now than ever. Due to the increasing polarization in society, each side of the political spectrum is growing more separate day by day as people only speak to those who share the same opinions as them. It is ironic how tolerance is preached but not followed when someone has a different perspective.
Silicon Valley’s tech companies like Google, Youtube, and Facebook are beginning to censor the opinions that do not fit their personal and mostly liberal narrative. In August 2017, James Damore, a software engineer at Google, was fired because he wrote a memo that critiqued the efficacy of diversity programs and how the dearth of women in STEM may not directly be caused by sexism. His memo was completely supported by facts and statistics, yet Google’s political correctness silenced him—resulting in Damore fighting back with a lawsuit.
Similarly, former Facebook workers revealed in an interview with Gizmodo that they were told to inject liberal news stories into the trending news section of Facebook in an attempt to conceal the conservative news stories. On Youtube, political commentators are slowly being pushed off the platform as Youtube takes away a source of their revenue through demonetization.
The anti-conservative bias that exists in Silicon Valley stifles intellectual curiosity. Though Google, YouTube, and Facebook are all private companies and can legally do as they please, a question of morals and ethics comes into play. These platforms dominate the internet with a network of millions of people, so when companies silence people with a different perspective, they also curtail their freedom of speech and expression. People’s right to free speech in a mall—a private property—is protected under the law, so why has this not been extended to social media as well? Google, Youtube, and Facebook hold market-dominant positions and because a large amount of its users receive information from these sources, these companies should understand the implications of constantly presenting biased information.
The censorship and demonetization has effectively pushed many conservatives off mainstream media onto the new social platform called Gab. This initiative may seem like the perfect solution for conservatives at first because they are free to post their content, but this divide is silencing potential conversations. Just as liberals are seemingly on one side, so are conservatives on Gab.
Though I am not one for the government regulating private businesses, it has become imperative for the government to regulate monopolistic companies that have been proven to abuse their power multiple times. The rules could be very straightforward such as ending censorship on content that is protected under the First Amendment. The intent of this regulation would be to protect freedom of speech of all Americans, not just those who agree with the company.
America remains one of the freest countries in the world because of the right to free speech, and we should not permit this to be lost because of intense political correctness. Otherwise, as much as we may think we are enlightened, our freedom of speech will slowly be disintegrated.
Silicon Valley’s tech companies like Google, Youtube, and Facebook are beginning to censor the opinions that do not fit their personal and mostly liberal narrative. In August 2017, James Damore, a software engineer at Google, was fired because he wrote a memo that critiqued the efficacy of diversity programs and how the dearth of women in STEM may not directly be caused by sexism. His memo was completely supported by facts and statistics, yet Google’s political correctness silenced him—resulting in Damore fighting back with a lawsuit.
Similarly, former Facebook workers revealed in an interview with Gizmodo that they were told to inject liberal news stories into the trending news section of Facebook in an attempt to conceal the conservative news stories. On Youtube, political commentators are slowly being pushed off the platform as Youtube takes away a source of their revenue through demonetization.
The anti-conservative bias that exists in Silicon Valley stifles intellectual curiosity. Though Google, YouTube, and Facebook are all private companies and can legally do as they please, a question of morals and ethics comes into play. These platforms dominate the internet with a network of millions of people, so when companies silence people with a different perspective, they also curtail their freedom of speech and expression. People’s right to free speech in a mall—a private property—is protected under the law, so why has this not been extended to social media as well? Google, Youtube, and Facebook hold market-dominant positions and because a large amount of its users receive information from these sources, these companies should understand the implications of constantly presenting biased information.
The censorship and demonetization has effectively pushed many conservatives off mainstream media onto the new social platform called Gab. This initiative may seem like the perfect solution for conservatives at first because they are free to post their content, but this divide is silencing potential conversations. Just as liberals are seemingly on one side, so are conservatives on Gab.
Though I am not one for the government regulating private businesses, it has become imperative for the government to regulate monopolistic companies that have been proven to abuse their power multiple times. The rules could be very straightforward such as ending censorship on content that is protected under the First Amendment. The intent of this regulation would be to protect freedom of speech of all Americans, not just those who agree with the company.
America remains one of the freest countries in the world because of the right to free speech, and we should not permit this to be lost because of intense political correctness. Otherwise, as much as we may think we are enlightened, our freedom of speech will slowly be disintegrated.