While Google and Facebook recently announced they would be taking measures to halt the spread of "fake news," the social media platform Twitter has gone further and has already begun a mass purge of what they consider to be "alt-right" news, but in reality is simply news with more of a conservative lean to counter the general liberal bias of the mainstream media.
The so-called Alt-Right by and large were supportive of Donald Trump for president, reported what the mainstream media refused to report, and in many cases forced the mainstream media to address issues, such as Hillary Clinton's health, which was considered "fake news" until Clinton publicly passed out at the 9/11 memorial, which validated every question about her health conservatives had been noting and reporting on for months beforehand.
While there are undoubtedly some "fake news" sites across the Internet, specifically set up to provide hoax news to discredit the alternative media, there are hundreds of thousands of alternative news sites that provide a counter to the liberal media bias within the mainstream news.
Using the recent presidential election as an example, a MRC/YouGov Poll found that by a 3-to-1 margin, the public noted a mainstream media bias in favor of Hillary Clinton. Among the key findings in the survey shows that 69 percent of voters believed the media was dishonest and untruthful. 78 percent believed coverage of the presidential campaign was biased, with 59 percent believing the bias favored Clinton and 21 percent saying the bias favored Trump. In that number we note that even 32 percent of Clinton voters noted a marked pro-Clinton bias.
After Donald Trump won the presidential election against Hillary Clinton, liberals and Democrats, unable to admit the loss was because they chose an incredibly flawed candidate started looking to place blame, and many placed that blame on social media and "fake news," aka news without the liberal bias.
Now tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter have decided to lash out against conservatives, specifically alternative news that bypassed the mainstream media to help deliver a win for President-Elect Trump.
The S&P 500 slipped less than one point for a second day of losses, with tech giants bearing the worst of the rout. The FANG block of Facebook, Amazon.com Inc., Netflix Inc. and Google parent Alphabet each fell more than 2.4 percent. The group has dropped every day since Trump’s victory, sinking 8 percent for the worst retreat since February amid concern about the impact of Trump’s policies on trade overseas, where U.S. technology companies thrive.
The industry, which largely supported Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign, may also face higher hurdles for expanding their footprints after some high-profile business leaders including Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos clashed with Trump during the election. Trump, responding to negative coverage in the Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos, maintained Bezos purchased the news organization to gain political influence and avoid antitrust scrutiny. Shares of the online retailer have lost more than $30 billion in value since Tuesday’s vote.
It would be an understatement to say that these tech giants are unhappy that Donald Trump won the presidential election, so they are lashing out against the very people that bypassed the mainstream media to provide a counter to the liberal bias.
TECH GIANTS LASH OUT
So, while Facebook and Google have decided to make themselves the arbitrators of "truth," meaning anything that does not fit their political ideology, Twitter has begun a mass ban on conservatives, labeling them "alt-right," while attempting to define that as "white nationalism," which in reality is more aptly described by an ANP reader as nothing more than "America First Nationalism."
One of the first and most prominent accounts caught up in the deletion is Richard Spencer, president and director of the National Policy Institute, an alt-right think tank focused on white identity and related policy issues.
Twitter removed Spencer’s verified account, formerly available at @RichardBSpencer, Tuesday evening.
"This is corporate Stalinism," Richard Spencer told The Daily Caller News Foundation. "Twitter is trying to airbrush the Alt Right out of existence. They’re clearly afraid. They will fail!"
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Paul Town, one of the alt-right trolls responsible for feeding Olivia Nuzzi at The Daily Beast a false and outlandish narrative on how Pepe the cartoon frog came to be associated with white nationalism, was also suspended.
Other suspended users, among many, include Pax Dickinson, Ricky Vaughn and John Rivers — all notable alt-right accounts.
BOTTOM LINE
There are alternatives to both Facebook (here) and Twitter (here), as well as alternative search engines that could take an even larger bite out of these tech giants' revenue if users abandoned then en masse.
The backlash by tech giants against conservatives has just begun, but alternative media has risen to the point where those of us large and small, together and united, managed to overcome the liberal media, in some cases forcing them to cover topics that they had previously refused to, and that is no small feat.
Historically the mainstream media has led the narrative, influenced almost every decision Americans make, from Christmas shopping to politics, and alternative media now needs to continue to hold the mainstream accountable for their biases, their lies, and their disinformation, while encouraging as many as possible to boycott them and their advertisers and sponsors.
Alternative media also needs to be hyper-vigilant to avoid hoaxes, fake news sites that mimic traditional news outlets, and hoax sites created for no other purpose than to discredit the alternative media as a whole.
A few weeks ago we at ANP ran across a document that had it been real would have rocked the Clinton campaign even more than it already had been, it took no less that five hours to track it back to the original source, which was a site that reported real and deliberately fake news and to prove that the document was a brilliant piece of fakery. Most the day was wasted, but better to be sure, than to be first.
Below - Fighting fire with fire! Alex Jones announces the Infowars Fake News Analysis Center to combat lies and fake stories being pushed by the Mainstream Media.
