LETTER: Beware censoring tech titans
January 7, 2021 - 9:00 pm
I’ll be honest: The one thing that scares me more than the possibility of Kamala Harris being president one day is the very real issue of censorship by social media bigwigs such as Jack Dorsey of Twitter. Money is no longer the issue with these types. The man is 44 years old with a net worth of $12 billion. If he never earned another dime, he could spend $1 million a day until age 74 and still have more than $1 billion in the banks.
So it’s obviously an issue of power accumulation. The ability to dictate, control and manipulate how others think — in this case by censorship of dissenting views. We already have newspapers and “news” channels that no longer report the news but contort it to conform to a particular political ideology. And now “social” media is getting less social and more political.
While you may actually embrace censorship now if it aids in your “cause,” be mindful that censorship is a capricious double-edged sword. The next one that gets cut might be you.