The press isn’t arguing any more: Silicon Valley is allied with Democrats. And The New York Times is worried that alliance is crumbling.
Democrats scrambled to condemn the company after fallout from a Times hit piece that accused Facebook of working with conservatives and ignoring Russian activity on its platform.. In the latest Times piece, published November 17, the paper wrote that “The alliance between Democrats and Silicon Valley has buckled and bent this year.”
The alleged reason for the general discontent? Facebook has allowed “hateful speech, Russian propaganda and conservative-leaning ‘fake news’ to flourish.” However, some of the content that was labelled “hateful speech” and “fake news” was from legitimate conservative sources, and, in one case, the conservative satire site The Babylon Bee.
Now Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) are criticizing the tech firms that “cemented millions of dollars in campaign donations” to the DNC.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) criticized Facebook for its “aggressive” behavior, and called for the firing of FAcebook employees who wanted “opposition research” on Democrats. Open Markets Institute policy director Matt Stoller was quoted saying that tech companies were obviously no longer friends to Democrats, but instead “they are the problem.”
The Times added that Democrats felt that tech companies should not have “bowed to misplaced Republican criticism about bias.” Even though Facebook has systematically deleted Republican political ads, censored pro-life pages, and suppressed conservative news in the trending topics section, the liberal media still claims that any conservative criticism of bias in the tech world is “misplaced.” Even the Times admits Facebook and other tech firms are aligned with Democrats, but questions the idea of bias.
Now without that alliance, Democrats are calling for the platforms to be regulated. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has received more donations from Facebook employees than any other candidate, said that he was “worried that Facebook would bow to pressure from Republicans.” Fellow Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) spoke out against Facebook, saying that it was “now like every other industry” and that it “does a lot of harm.”
