An incredible innovation, the internet has completely changed daily life around the planet and altered the trajectory of society. Almost all information ever known is at your fingertips. You no longer have to go to the library or visit an expert; just search any question and pages of information instantaneously flood your computer or even your phone.
Doesn't matter what you seek; information is available. You can find ancient history, entertainment trivia, scientific data, or how to do anything. There are tutorials for automobile repairs to dancing to plumbing to tying a fish hook. The abundance of information is astounding, but the crazy convenience makes us complacent and careless.
All imaginable products and services are also available. Literally almost anything even illicit items can be purchased online. As online shopping continues into frenzy, we don't realize we are feeding the information beast. Online vendors dutifully try to protect your financial information, but they are fast and loose with your preferences and personal data. Data breaches are worrisome, but intently exploiting our behavior is sinister.
Search anything from diets to fences and those ads eerily populate your internet activity for weeks. We are learning that all matter of internet companies are collecting and compiling data on each of us and apparently sharing or selling that data. It should be obvious the creepy way ads follow our preferences, but we give our information away with casual abandon anyway. So it's no surprise it's being used against us.
Most Americans don't seem bothered by aggressive merchandizing, but what about marketing ideologies or politics? Catering to our proclivities for purchases is one thing, but our political preferences are quite another. And are they catering to various political groups? Or shaping them? Or shaming them? Or flat out manipulating political discourse to promote preferred philosophies like they push you to their paid vendors?
Search any political topic and results yield about 90% liberal sites and sources. Internet leviathans will categorically deny any bias because their views are so slanted they consider liberalism as mainstream moderate thought. And accordingly think it their duty to banish extreme or in their estimation inferior thought, which is anything not liberal.
Vowing to label or delete "fake news," their arrogance is exposed. The people don't need self-anointed arbiters of information; we can discern fact, quality, and truth without elite guidance. People have always chosen whom to trust; we just have more choices now. And since they consider their perspective superior, they will suppress what they deem inferior or more frighteningly make unpopular what they don't like.
Certain they are smarter than average Americans, Facebook thinks they "should" slot us all into their neat little categories and arrogantly they think they "can." The absolute absurdity is best illustrated by Facebook censoring the famous Trump stumping duo, Diamond & Silk. Known for their in your face defense and support of Trump, Facebook as dubbed them "unsafe to community!" They do not advocate violence, but they promote Trump and to Zuckerberg's shock troops that's unsafe.
Twitter also routinely censors or "shadow bans" conservatives. Not hiding their uber liberal leanings and utter loathing of anything conservative, they all have a right to their opinions and even a right to proselytize their leftist ideas, but they have a monopoly on information and information vehicles! Dictators seek information monopolies.
We have been lulled into this false sense that the internet is a wide open super information highway. That it's the biggest public forum for unfettered public discourse; that it's the ultimate flow of ideas. It could be, but it's not! Google and social media are vigorously promoting liberal ideas and pointedly isolating conservative ideas by manipulating search results or suppressing conservative content and users. The internet may seem open ended, but the tech giants are certainly shunting us into a dead end. Just like news, conservatives need choices for search engines and social media.
"Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them." Titus 3:10
