In last week’s column, I showed exhaustive evidence how Big Tech is doing more meddling in elections than Russia. This week I’ll show how they are coming after your kids. It’s a warning about Big Tech’s dangerous tentacles in local schools. And Google is leading the way and well on its way to become America’s goliath schoolmaster.
This past week I was catching up on a past copy of one of my favorite publications: WND’s Whistleblower. In the June 2019 issue, Michelle Malkin wrote another super insightful piece titled, “4 steps to protect your kids from Google predators.”
Malkin explained why the Google warning:
The Silicon Valley giant has hooked legions of children and teachers into its data mining products through lucrative partnerships with public schools across America. Learning no longer starts with A, B, C but with G, G, G: G Suite, Gmail, Google Cloud, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Hangouts, Google Vault, Google Jamboard, Google Chromebooks and Google Classroom.
Don’t forget: Google now has 80 million educators and students around the world using G Suite for Education, 40 million students and teachers in Google Classroom and 30 million more using Google Chromebooks inside and outside the classroom. Despite a report last fall from the U.S. Department of Education’s inspector general blasting the feds for failing to investigate a backlog of Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act violations, the Trump White House has done nothing to repair the damage to FERPA done by the Obama administration. The Democrats’ tech-chummy bureaucrats busted open the door to third-party sharing of children’s personal data with government agencies, nonprofits and private educational technology vendors.
This is how Google has gotten away with unauthorized scanning and indexing of student email accounts and targeted online advertising based on search engine activity, as well as auto-syncing of passwords, browsing history and other private data across devices and accounts belonging to students and families unaware of default tracking.
Does that internet invasion just chap your privacy intrusion hide? You think the federal government has too much overreach? Google has far too much power and overreach into our children’s lives, schools and education!
My wife, Gena, and I couldn’t agree more with Malkin:
Given the privacy breaches, public safety dangers, illegal data profiteering and child predation – not to mention the mental health crisis among America’s youngsters connected to social media pathologies – there should be a nationwide clamor to deplatform Google completely from public schools. Until that revolt among parents and educators across party lines swells, it’s up to moms and dads to seize control (thanks to parent watchdog Cheri Kiesecker for these tips):
1. Refuse to surrender your child’s privacy as the price of admission to school. Google logins must not be a requirement to participate in the classroom.
2. Demand disclosure of edutech terms of service for all apps, software and hardware.
3. If your child has already been dragooned into G Suite, dive into its “Activity Controls” and the “Manage Activity” section. Investigate the settings for password auto-save and auto sign-in, tracking of YouTube search and watch histories, live chat transcripts, sync and “Remove the Device” functions. Hold your school district’s administrators accountable for putting your kids’ privacy first.
4. Wean yourselves – not just your kids – off Google. Try the Brave browser, DuckDuckGo search engine, BitChute video hosting service, Minds or MeWe social networking and ProtonMail.
It has long been known that Google shadowbans (engages in covert censoring via its latest algorithms of) conservative thought, as was discovered by Doug Wead, a New York Times-bestselling author and an adviser to two American presidents. He was special assistant to president George H.W. Bush, but found that his best YouTube videos couldn’t be found and new membership on his Facebook page had stopped simply because he posted videos of himself going on Fox News. He shows multiple Google screen shots to prove his case here
To be honest, I’ve experienced a similar trend with Google searches of my conservative commentary. I’ve been writing culture warrior columns for roughly 13 years (more than 700 articles), and they used to easily surface at the top of Google searches of just my name. But now they are like hunting for Bigfoot or UFOs on Google unless you type in an exact title match of the article for the search. My culture warrior column popularity has actually grown, and even goes out weekly to my over 6 million Facebook members, but I believe Google now shadowbans my conservative commentary from public search results. While my literary popularity has grown, new Google algorithms appear to be constraining it.
If Google (and other Big Tech companies) utilize shadowbanning to restrict conservative results, what does that mean for students in schools everywhere who are seeking a fair and balanced study of subjects on the internet? It’s obvious the liberal progressive slant and education they will yield by mere Google searches, not to mention all the other venues I mentioned above that Google is monopolizing in academia.
That is why I believe it’s time at the very least for a bunch of wealthy conservatives to create competitive search engines and social media platforms to combat Big Tech’s monopoly, oppression and suppression. Can you imagine how many millions of citizens would jump ship from using the Big Tech companies?
Friends, it’s also high time to send a strong and forceful message to your representatives. Write, call or email them today, and demand they too fight fast to break up the goliath monopoly that Google has over our kids schools and minds.
I’m back to that profound truth articulated by President Ronald Reagan: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.”
