June 26, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging the federal government to address the threat of Big Tech media consolidation:
“Project Veritas’ Google video which shows that the Internet monopoly is engaged in a concerted effort to use their market dominance to influence the 2020 presidential election against President Trump is just one more example of the danger presented by media consolidation and big tech as a whole. While it is uncertain whether Google could in fact sway an election simply by manipulating people’s opinions based upon search results and other machine learning algorithms, the fact that they are actively seeking to do so using AI-driven predictive learning is a breach of the public trust.
“The Wall Street Journal reports that there is momentum building for the U.S. government to subject Google to full scrutiny to determine if they are a monopoly which should be broken up using our nation’s anti-trust laws. Given the Silicon Valley giant’s stated work to politically weaponize their purportedly neutral search algorithms to fight for social justice, the U.S. government cannot move too quickly to provide that scrutiny.
“Additionally, with the exception of the Sprint-T-Mobile merger which is strictly about increasing spectrum to create a viable third 5G competitor, all proposals that would allow greater consolidation of media under consideration by DOJ, FCC and FTC should be put on hold to ensure that the bigger, more powerful media empires that emerge are in the nation’s interest in this new era of information consolidation and manipulation.”
Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org
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