(HorizonPost.com) – Political censorship by big technology companies such as Twitter and Google got worse in 2022, according to the founder of Tusk, a new internet browser aimed at conservative readers. Jeff Bermant, CEO of Tusk, said research shows that Google buries articles putting forward a conservative viewpoint on page 5 or 6 of its search results and that this has the effect of pulling public opinion toward left-wing positions. “TUSK was developed with the idea of free speech because if you go to other browsers and you go to their news feeds, you’ll find that it’s center-left or it’s left and you weren’t getting the full story,” Bermant said last year.
The issue made global headlines when Twitter chief Elon Musk released what were known as the Twitter files in 2022. These showed that the FBI had asked Twitter to censor negative stories about Joe Biden and his son Hunter in the run-up to the Presidential election of 2020.
In December, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio wrote letters to Google, Apple, Facebook, and other tech giants asking for information and records detailing their alleged collusion with government agencies and the Biden administration. Jordan said that the reach of social media is so great that “it can serve as a powerful partisan arm of the woke speech police.”
In a further example of anti-conservative censorship, the State Department has offered grants to organizations who promote “free speech” provided the speech adheres to left-leaning ideas. To be in the running for a grant, free speech initiatives must include, “LGBTQI+ persons, transgender or gender-diverse persons in particular; migrants; members of marginalized racial, ethnic, and Indigenous communities, religious minority group members; and others targeted by anti-rights actors,” according to State Department stipulations.
The criteria for grant applications make it very clear that it intends to promote “free expression” for some but not for others. The details of the grant specify that it is only intended to promote “free speech” among so-called “marginalized” groups and communities.
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