Conservatives have known for a long time that at least two of the big three -- Google and Facebook -- have slanted their search results in favor of Democrats. The third company listed in the articles is Amazon, and while that one is a biggie, it isn't clear that it was as politically influential as the other two.
But here's a surprise. Al Franken has championed the cause of the customers against these three. Here's an excerpt from Al Franken Just Gave the Speech Big Tech Has Been Dreading:
Franken has not shied away from voicing concerns about tech’s encroachments on privacy and competition in the past, but Wednesday’s criticism was unusually sweeping, tying together a revised narrative about Silicon Valley that only emerged in glimpses during the Russia hearings. Franken argued that the same control over consumers that facilitated the spread of Russian propaganda on social media also helps Facebook and Google siphon advertising revenue from other publishers and helps Amazon dictate terms to content creators and smaller sellers. Tech giants are incentivized to disregard consumer privacy, Franken noted. “Accumulating massive troves of information isn’t just a side project for them. It’s their whole business model,” he said. “We are not their customers, we are their product.”
We would have to speculate why Franken would be concerned about Amazon influencing content creators, and it's not entirely clear if any remedy he proposed would change Google's or Facebook's efforts to influence voters. But if Democrats are now critics of the very companies that helped them so much that's a big deal.
See also, Tech companies pushed for net neutrality. Now Sen. Al Franken wants to turn it on them.
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2:26 PM 11/14/2017
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