The existential threat Google-Facebook represent to America

For several years, I've been explaining patiently and relentlessly to all who would listen how and why Google and Facebook pose existential threats to American freedom – freedom of speech, press, religion, privacy and elections.

In other words, threats to everything America stands for.

As a media business pledged to be "A Free Press for a Free People," and meaning it, this has really hit home for us.

For almost 25 years, WND has blazed trails in the new media world as the first independent online news site. We were challenged, vilified and made sport of by the state-run media, but it was not until 2017 that Google and Facebook – along with Twitter, Apple and Amazon – joined forces against us.

And then I suffered a series of strokes in 2019 – talk about a double-whammy!

At least it's no secret now. But WND has continued to tumble – Google and Facebook denying us revenues and readers, Amazon killing WND books and movies.

While in normal times WND regularly showed up among the top of Google News results, it now never does. Even worse are the words it uses to characterize our stories – "dangerous," "derogatory," even "shocking content." These are all applied to TRUE stories – all of which have panned out. But few got to read them, because Facebook censored them and Google made sure they weren't read by most people.

I don't want reform. I want real justice for those harmed by these companies. What they have done to the American landscape with these tactics is a disgrace!

Here's a primer on why these two companies, along with others like Apple, Amazon, YouTube and Twitter, must be broken up through anti-trust actions, stripped of their inexcusable protections against consumer liability, stopped from invading the privacy of Americans for profit, blocked from using the most intimate personal data to inject extreme bias into the national debate, rigging elections, and least of all for its restraint of trade practices against WND. Anyone know a good lawyer?

Furthermore, and most important, they need to be stopped from blocking, banning and blacklisting legitimate political speech, imposing speech codes, enforcing "political correctness" standards in either content or advertising sales or punishing opinions with which they disagree.

Under no circumstances should these corporations be permitted to engage in political lobbying, soliciting, accepting government contracts or participating in any political activities, operating as they currently do under special government protections against liability claims.

By law, Google and Facebook must be ideologically neutral in all they do, since, under the law, they are not "publishers" but "carriers" of information – the same goes for Twitter, Amazon and Apple.

The U.S. Justice Department should immediately begin an investigation of the Google-Facebook-YouTube-Amazon-Twitter-Apple axis of evil. Such relationships by the most powerful media organizations in the world clearly defy U.S. law. But that will have to wait for the second coming of President Donald Trump, or a fair and square election.

Robert Epstein, a Ph.D. psychologist who focuses on search engine manipulation, warned that Google's attempts to manipulate public opinion are more terrifying than the Chinese government's attempts to control its citizens.

"To me, [China's manipulation] is scary, but people are aware of it," he told PJ Media. "It's done openly by the government. I think what is happening elsewhere in the world that's being driven mostly by Google is much more dangerous, because it's mostly invisible," said a prescient Epstein back in 2018. He added, "There's no transparency; there's no accountability. It's a more ambitious kind of surveillance than that of the Chinese government."

Epstein says he is certain Google employed elements of its ability to change its users' opinions on whom to vote for in the 2018 midterm election – thus potentially affecting control of the House of Representatives during Trump’s presidency. His research also suggested, before the fact, that it was possible for Google to select the winner of the 2020 presidential election – and without detection.

A Hillary Clinton supporter in the 2016 election, Epstein says his research suggests Google's demonstrable pro-Democrat activism in that race explains most of her vote lead in the popular vote.

Epstein says Google has "enormous power to shift opinions and votes, but they're aware that they have the power, they talk about using the power, and my own data suggests that they do in fact use the power."

Epstein argued that bias impacts algorithms, even without a conscious attempt to influence people.

"There is solid research showing that programmers have a bias of some sort; that bias ends up getting expressed in their code unconsciously," he said. "Even without deliberateness, we still will end up with algorithms that have biases embedded in them."

However, Epstein adds: "We know that the bias is explicit. We know that. It's impossible for me to believe that Google executives and employees are not deliberate in their manipulations."

The 2020 presidential race was one for the books. Joe Biden got 80 million votes – come on!

It's time to stand up to this imminent and existential threat to free speech, the free press, freedom of religion, the right to privacy, American sovereignty, and free and fair elections.

Indeed, there's not much time left.

Support WND – including its ongoing investigations into the Digital Cartel. As the internet's first independent online news outlet, founded back in 1997, WND has been systematically victimized by Google-Facebook through its manipulative algorithms, ad blocks and biased search results. We ask for your prayers and your critical financial support, without which WND will cease to exist.

If you think the internet is under the total control of Big Tech now, it's going to get much worse this year as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and YouTube (owned by Google) get bigger and bigger.

It's not just WND in their cross hairs. It's Breitbart, the Daily Caller and all the rest.

WND has been forcibly downsized by these leftists by 80% since January 2017. There's a direct correlation between the percentage of Google-Facebook advertising revenue control and the decline in advertising revenue at WND in the same time period.

Thus, there's nowhere else for WND to turn than to direct financial contributions. What we collect in donations for the WND News Center all goes to reporters, editors and contributors – every dime.

That's why beginning Tuesday, June 15, we're launching our drive to raise $100,000 by July 15. And with your help, and God's help, we will rise like a phoenix again to help America straighten out this mess.

Please support us with your prayers and by making a generous tax-deductible donation to the WND News Center, the nonprofit, charitable, 501(c)3 sister organization to the for-profit WND. And consider sending a monthly contribution of any amount.

If we go down, soon the independent free press will be a thing of the past, and with it, our uniquely blessed nation. Please make your tax-deductible donations online at the WND News Center website. Or, if you prefer to mail your donation, please make your check out to "WND News Center," write "Farah donation appeal" on the check's memo line, and mail it to: WND News Center, P.O. Box 100, 580 E Street, Hawthorne, NV 89415-0100. Thank you very much, and God bless you.

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