Even Amazon.com, once only a bookstore, is now producing original television series and films through Amazon Studios. CEO Jeff Bezos is now attending the Golden Globes and the Oscars for producing films and television shows like Manchester by the Sea, Transparent, and The Salesman.364 Netflix also evolved from just a streaming service to producing original content; YouTube is producing original shows now, and both Facebook and Apple have jumped into the content producing business as well.365
Because of this, a record number of people are canceling their cable subscriptions. There were 1.4 million fewer people subscribing to cable TV in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the previous year.366 These people have been called “cord cutters,” and with Netflix and Hulu offering On Demand streams of shows from major networks, and HBO now having their own app, more people are abandoning traditional cable TV.
Even with all these new technologies and methods people are using to get their information, those who control them aren’t without their biases. New York Observer writer Liz Crokin decided to investigate Apple’s liberal bias, so she set up an Apple News account on her iPhone and immediately noticed that her news feed was predominately liberal and anti-Trump. “Of all the channels listed in the Apple News politics section, only two of the 16 arguably lean right◦— the rest are reliably left-wing,” she wrote.367
Of course, Apple CEO Tim Cook openly supported Hillary Clinton’s campaign and held fundraisers for her, including a $50,000 a plate dinner, and is a big promoter of the liberal agenda.368 More liberal bias can be seen on iTunes. For example, the pro-Trump podcast, MAGAPod was labeled with an “explicit” warning, simply because the show is pro-Trump. It was only after this bias began making headlines that iTunes removed the explicit warning from the podcast.369
Even Apple’s App Store is problematic. They refused to publish a satirical Hillary Clinton e-mailgate game called Capitol HillAwry claiming it was “offensive” and “mean spirited,” but had approved dozens of games targeting Donald Trump. One such game is called Dump Trump, which depicts him as a giant turd; and even Punch Trump and Slap Trump games where players assault Donald Trump for points were approved.370 Breitbart published an article exposing this bias, and a few days later Apple decided to finally allow the Hillary Clinton game to be included in the App Store.371 Apple (and Google) have rejected the Twitter alternative Gab app several times, claiming that people use it to post, “content that could be considered defamatory or mean-spirited.”372 The real reason is that Gab isn’t following in line with Silicon Valley’s social justice warrior agenda. Apple has also banned apps that use the image of Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character often used in pro-Trump memes.373
Instagram has been shown to selectively ban certain topics and accounts as well.374 They have even deleted several of my posts claiming they were violations of their terms of service. One in which I called singer Lana Del Rey a “skank,” and another which consisted of a meme showing a nice white family with the caption, “White People: The only race you can legally discriminate against.” After singer Rihanna posted fully topless photos of herself, her Instagram account was temporarily shut down for violating their nudity policy, but because she’s a celebrity, they reinstated it.375 The company even apologized for taking it down. Rappers like 50 Cent, Soulja Boy, and others have posted death threats on their Instagram accounts and the company doesn’t suspend them.376 But the account of a graffiti artist named Lushsux was banned after he posted photos of an anti-Hillary Clinton mural he painted which just consisted of her in a bikini.
“I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist with a tin foil hat, but the timing of the Hillary Clinton mural posting and the deletion that ensued can’t just be a coincidence,” he said.377 The artist had previously posted photos depicting Donald Trump naked and Melania Trump topless, but those photos weren’t censored by Instagram◦— only his anti-Hillary painting.
Facebook also regularly censors what people post and manipulates which of your friends’ posts actually show up on your news feed.378 If someone posts something that contains certain keywords that Facebook has determined they do not want to go viral for whatever reason, their algorithms filter it out and prevent the post from showing up.379
The social media giant openly admits they manipulate which posts are shown on our friends’ news feeds, and even conduct experiments to determine how they can affect people’s moods and behavior.380 Twitter, as you will see in a following chapter, also censors certain hashtags, tweets, and trending topics. The censorship is sometimes subtle, but once you know how it works, it becomes as clear as day.
Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, and most of Twitter’s top executives, are liberals and have repeatedly ignored calls for violence by anti-Trump accounts and Black Lives Matter supporters despite clearly violating the site’s terms of service (not to mention the law).381 There is also increasing evidence that Twitter is limiting the reach of popular controversial conservative accounts.382 The site has also awarded verified accounts (the often-coveted blue checkmark) to many liberal trolls like racist and anti-police Black Lives Matter activists as well as LGBT and gender bending advocates.383
YouTube, as we will discuss in detail in a later chapter, isn’t just a place where people upload their own videos, but is a huge media giant with an agenda other than being a place where independent content creators can share their work. YouTube chooses which videos will show up on their home page, on the “trending” box, and in the “recommended” section, which result in a flood of new views; and the company admits that they suppress and censor videos which they deem to contain “controversial” messages.384
A video that few people had noticed with hardly any views can quickly go viral by a moderator adding it to the trending tab. YouTube has also been accused of censoring certain channels by preventing notifications from showing up when a new video is uploaded and keeping certain channels’ videos from appearing in the trending section at all.
YouTube regularly includes little rainbow graphics to promote LGBT events and features LGBT pride videos,385 and even once secretly flew dozens of little-known black YouTubers to their headquarters in California for private mentoring and seminars to help them grow their channels.386 Black Lives Matter ‘leader’ Deray McKesson was there to give the keynote address, and other speakers included Russell Simmons and comedian Wanda Sykes. The event was dubbed “YouTube BLACK.”
Barack Obama appeared on the national stage at the same time social media was rapidly integrating into people’s lives, and having a Facebook page was becoming almost as standard as having a telephone. His inner circle of political operatives could see the communication landscape was changing, and they jumped on it immediately. Obama was seen as the first “social media president” and was the first president to have a Facebook page and a Twitter account.387 The White House would later get its own YouTube channel.388