Democracy under Attack from Tech Giants!

Twitter, Facebook etc. are banning Republicans. It should be understood that the political role of these social media giants is not new, they have been routinely biased outside of the USA for years. (See Is Twitter a Menace?). The misperception of Twitter as a platform for free speech has had enormous ramifications. As an example the UK Commons Committee on interference in the EU Referendum failed to notice that Twitter had routinely shadow banned and outright banned Leave users. Facebook was doing the same to any private groups who attempted to set up pro-Leave Facebook pages.

The political role of Google and Apple is now also out in the open as they ban and shadow ban Republican platforms. Again the bias at Google was known for some time (See Google, Twitter, Facebook are all biased ) but rejected as a "conspiracy theory" despite the obvious evidence.

The issue for the UK is that we have allowed these organisations to monopolise our Internet. This foreign interference can be stopped with a National Firewall. At the moment Vietnam, Russia, China, UAE, Egypt, Turkey and Iran have full National Firewalls but now that the US tech giants are openly admitting to controlling content for political purposes we should expect this to spread. The UK should make a National Firewall a priority, not just to save our democracy but also to secure bank transactions, the Internet of things and the domestic retail industry. The other reason for a National Firewall is that China is an exceptionally sophisticated enemy with extremely deep pockets and long term strategies. This means that if there is a showdown with China at some time in the future we may be shocked to discover that they can turn us off.

The UK should establish a National Firewall and regulate foreign sales emporia such as Amazon and foster domestic social media platforms.

The failure of the UK to treat the Internet as a strategic resource on the front line of commercial and military conflict will have catastrophic consequences if it continues.

11/1/2021

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