Whats Next for Big Tech if Left Unchecked

Big tech's undeniable influence is more present than ever right now, as Trump was banned from FaceBook and Twitter, and America witnessed  the platforms brazenly censor the New York Post when they blocked the Paper for sharing the story of Hunter Biden's dangerous connections to China and the Ukraine. This selective censorship isn't even being hidden any more, as even Time Magazine detailed how big tech colluded with politicians and interfered with the 2020 US presidential election in an article written in February of 2021 titled: The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election. 

In The Article it details how certain tech firms  were involved in the election in the following entry:

"The Voting Rights Lab and IntoAction created state-specific memes and graphics, spread by email, text, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, urging that every vote be counted. Together, they were viewed more than 1 billion times. Protect Democracy’s election task force issued reports and held media briefings with high-profile experts across the political spectrum, resulting in widespread coverage of potential election issues and fact-checking of Trump’s false claims."

Important note on what this article has just shared. For the majority of Trump's Presidency, as well as why Trump was impeached the first time, is his political opponents claimed that he worked with Vladamir Putin to influence the 2016 election with memes. So, when Trump does it, it's an impeachable offense, but when his political opponents do it, as well as conspire with big tech to influence the elections, it's perfectly okay. So much so, you're going to be wide open about it and brag about it in the most read Magazine in the Nation.

Artwork from the Times Magazine Article:
 The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election

So, it is clear that Big Tech has huge political influence and has gone unchecked by the federal Government with interference of two US Presidential Elections, but what lies ahead if left unchecked? Another dangerous element of big tech is their ability to push out competition. This was well exemplified by their expulsion of the Parler App. Not only from the Apple Play Store and the Google Play Store, but even more concerning so from Amazon's Servers so the website still can't operate. 

The Above is what People See When They Visit Parler.com now

Thanks to Parler's plug being pulled, they've had to make major cuts. Their most public one of their CEO, John Matze, signaling that effectively Parler is dead in the water. FaceBook and Twitter are not relenting in their campaign to maintain their positions at the top of the social media mountain. Hit pieces on popular publications like Rolling Stone have been pushing articles with misleading articles like: Inside MeWe, Where Anti-Vaxxers and Conspiracy Theorists Thrive. In the article it correctly attributes Mewe's growth to Facebooks abuse of profiting off of people's private information, as well as Facebook's high standard for the maintaining a voice on their page, but then tries to disparage the platform by drawing a parallel of the identity and mission of the app to entries in private groups on their page. Thus exemplified in the article below:

"But one look at the groups on MeWe makes it evident that a large number of users skew toward the right-wing or even right-wing extremist end of the spectrum. In the “politics” category, for instance, the groups with the most members skew right-leaning or Trump-leaning; additionally, even in the seemingly innocuous “alternative lifestyle” category, the most popular groups are conspiracy theory groups like “We the Sheeple,” which has 4150 members and where QAnon, Flat Earther, and “white genocide” memes run rampant."

Articles like this one are very high up in the search results when using platforms like Google. This is thanks to Big Tech and their manipulation of the algorithms articles like the aforementioned by Rolling Stone are discovered often as second or third in the search results in search engines like Google. Another example of such algorithm manipulation is seen when searching for Gab the second result is an article by NPR titled: Social Media Site Gab Is Surging, Even As Critics Blame It For Capitol Violence. The next result in the search for GAB is an article by Washington Post: 
Gab, the social network that has welcomed Qanon and extremist figures, explained.The Washington Post article is even potentially libelous as Gab founder, Andrew Torba pointed out in an interview with Mark Dice, that according to the FBI the majority of the riot on the Capital was actually organized on Face Book. 

Above:  Mark Dice Interviews Andrew Torba, founder of GAB

In the Dice Interview, Torba expanded upon his struggles with upstarting GAB when he shared that GAB not only deals with bad press with keeping Gab afloat, he has also suffered similar treatment as Parler as Gab has also been banned from the app stores and has only been able to stay afloat because Gab have their own servers. Torba further detailed his struggles with sharing that Gab has also been banned from using certain banking institutions because of the pressures applied to them by Big Tech. One of the scariest things Torba shared that an application he created called Decenter was removed entirely from the two biggest search engines, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. 

In the Dice interview, Torba also questions:

"Why do we continue to support such companies as they continue to abuse our privacy rights, as well as remain complicit in such crimes." 

In the interview Torba also eluded to the dangers of the big tech giants going unchecked. We have already seen how the giants can conspire with each other to remove competition, how they can influence culture with what speech they chose to deny or promote, and even their undeniable influence of presidential elections. So, what could be worse than what we are currently facing with big tech?

The original tech giant, Microsoft C.E.O. Bill Gates has just spent 2020 buying farmland, so much so he became the biggest landowner of farmland in the United States. Are people concerned because Gates may be getting into farming? Well on the contrary, multiple states are presenting bills considering allowing companies to create their own cities. Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak of Nevada has already struck a deal with Blockchain to have a "Smart" city built outside of Reno. Sisolak takes it a step further where he actually presented a bill to the Nevada State Legislature that would allow companies to Govern their own Smart Cities.

Concepts similar to "Smart" Cities have been practiced elsewhere in the World. One such example is Shenzen China, an economic zone which is overflowing with companies which house their own employees. The economic zone is just south of 2,000km size with a population of just North of 10 million. Shenzen has had a lot of negative press over the past decade as the Foxconn factory lies in its borders. The Foxconn factory employs a sprawling 450,000 employees and makes most of the World's Apple products. A large amount of Foxconn employees live with in the company provided housing, often in rooms with 8 room mates. 

Workers spend all day making Apple devices, at times 700 plus a day. These horrible living and working conditions have lead to the attempted suicide of many. The factory sees about 20 attempts a year,

A Foxconn employee in a dormitory at Longhua. The rooms are currently said to sleep eight. Photograph: Wang Yishu / Imaginechina/Camera Press

This raises some important questions. If bills like the one presented by Gov Sisolak of Nevada pass, and these "Smart" Cities can open and Govern them selves, just like how Shenzen operates and allows Foxconn to treat the 450,000 who work within their borders like that. What is stopping these companies from mistreating their employees? If you lived in a "Smart" city, would you have to sacrifice some of your rights? What is stopping these trillionares like Bill Gates from building cities in masse in states that allow it?

One thing that can help stop this from happening is to stop supporting big tech. A big message we can send to Big Tech as a whole would be to drop Face Book and Twitter. It's easy to do, and you have great alternatives available like Mewe and Gab. That is one of many steps one can take, but if one wanted to take it further, one could just ask themselves, do I really need that smart phone? How about that entertainment subscription run by the Big Tech company? The answer to a lot of these questions is no, in fact one might be much happier with less "big tech" in their lives. 

Written by: Tyler Wiest
Project GAS Writer/Producer

Subscribe to our newsletter