Angela Merkel, current Chancellor of Germany and the loneliest politician in the world, has recently accused the American internet giants Facebook and Google of using their search algorithms to create echo chambers and stifle public discourse in Europe.
Angela Merkel: internet search engines are ‘distorting perception’
All of which is ironic as the EU had just accused the big social networks of not involving themselves enough in public discourse. After the Paris Terror attacks, the EU developed a “code of conduct” agreement for Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft pushing the censoring of racially-motivated and violent hate speech. At a 2015 U.N. development summit in New York, Merkel herself was caught on a hot mic pressuring Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to crack down on hate speech in his platform. Merkel and the EU’s multiculturalism and open borders ideology intentionally misconstrues a distrust and skepticism of unvetted refugees and migrants as racist, Islamophobic, and xenophobic hate speech. By allowing the migrants to flow unabetted, war and regime change in Syria and other middle eastern nations can continue. Popular support is needed to facilitate this.
There are many in Silicon Valley who readily identify with the Globalist mission. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is actively assisting the Clinton campaign, hoping to become Treasury Secretary in a Clinton administration. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has been working directly with Hillary’s campaign since October of 2014.
Twitter also gave into the pressure and formed the “Twitter Trust & Safety Council,” comprised mostly of Progressive organizations who have bought into the conflation of an actual western liberal concept of equality under the law with freedom from societal ills. This misconception legitimizes political correctness, accusations of hate speech, and various other pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-intellectual guilt tripping, shaming and bullyism. Ever since then, Twitter’s value as a company has been on a downward trajectory. The reality is, bureaucracy and regulation, no matter how well-intentioned, displace freedom. Constantly being afraid of having your message conflated with any kind of bigotry is not fun, it’s repressive and uncomfortable. Twitter is now laying off 9% of its employees and shutting down Vine.
End Of The Vine: Twitter Says It’s Closing Video App Amid Wider Layoffs
Whether doing too much or doing too little, the social networks will never be able to please Merkel and her toadies in Brussels. These bureaucrats can only do one thing- expand the bureaucracy, and now they are trying to bring the social networks into their top-down governance structure. The EU will continue to heap edicts and regulations onto social media in order to assert de facto control over them, otherwise they won’t be welcome in the Eurozone. Control over the discourse, not protecting it, is the goal.
Although they may be giants of the internet, social media firms are still treated like pawns on the global chessboard, and are getting caught up in the economic tug of war between American and EU Globalists. After the EU fined Apple $14.5 billion for corporate tax avoidance, the US Department of Justice levied a $14 billion fine against the slowly unraveling Deutsche Bank. The Apple fine was dropped, probably because the fall of a hugely over-leveraged Deutsche Bank would have triggered another global recession. It looks like tit-for-tat, and now these American social media networks are being treated more like interlopers than guests.
But I think Mark Zuckerberg has seen the writing on the wall and realized that some of these individuals, such as Sheryl Sandberg, are willing to use a business as a stepping stone to reach their own political ambitions, and will happily jump ship if Facebook starts to sink like Twitter. Although I’m not sure if Zuckerberg genuinely cares about open political discourse or the welfare of the American people, I do believe he knows better than to let ideologues twist and manipulate Facebook until it is politicized and broken. He knows that the Globalists like Merkel running the EU and Hillary running for President, have no personal stakes in his business. They view it, and him, as a tool. When Trump supporter Peter Thiel became the target of ostracism for making a political donation, Zuckerberg knew he had to make a decision and take a stand to decide the future of his company. His leaked internal message tells the story:
Chirographer 