As the tech giants face growing scrutiny over their unregulated political power – including the power to swing elections – they have assured both congress and the public that they have no plans to abuse that power, and will commit to greater transparency in order to do so.
That’s to be expected. No corporation, accused of wrongdoing, is going to stand up and admit it. If Google and Facebook intend to manipulate the flow of information to serve their own interests and biases, the last thing they’re going to do is tell the world about it.
Instead, they’ll deploy their efforts under deceptive slogans like “fighting fake news” and “protecting election integrity.” And that’s exactly what they’re doing.
To expose the deception, watch what they do when confronted with a proposal that would ensure they are subject to real transparency and oversight. Say, for example, a program that could detect when Facebook or Google bias their algorithms in favor of a particular political candidate.
As it happens, such a program is already under construction...
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