Social Media Companies' Suppression of News is Equal to Voter Suppression

It doesn't matter if you're a conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, Libertarian or Green. If you're a decent human being, you'll agree that voter suppression is wrong.

By now you've probably heard how Facebook and Twitter attempted to suppress the distribution of an article by the NY Post on Hunter Biden's emails which are "potentially harmful" to him as well as his father, Presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Unfortunately, I predicted this. Facebook and Twitter Censorship of the NY Post article on Hunter Biden was an attempt to prevent the motivation of conservative voters to take a trip to the polls.

I wrote about in my book a potential method for social media sites to increase voter turnout for a specific candidate. In this case, Facebook and Twitter attempted to prevent the sharing of a news article which would have significantly increased conservative turnout less than 30 days before the election.

Quote from "Hacking of the Free":

Sadly, today winning elections today isn't about convincing people who to vote for, but simply about convincing enough people to show up and vote. Political strategists know this, and social media companies know this. Add to this that social media is now outpacing print newspapers as a new source, and you'll quickly understand that suppressing news on social media can be very damaging to ensuring that the public is properly informed of news.

Since the social media companies are fully aware of this information, suppressing information which will make voters angry at a candidate is absolutely equivalent to attempting to suppress their votes. So while Facebook and Twitter will suppress an article which puts a negative light on Joe Biden, they'll happily show me an article about who a squirrel predicted will win the 2020 Presidential Election.

The only reason that people knew about the censored article is that the news that Facebook and Twitter were preventing sharing the article went viral. Unfortunately in the process of this news going viral, several high profile accounts were completely silenced by Twitter for speaking out against this censorship, including James Woods.

Social media companies have already lost a lot of their users' trust. This latest incident could further damage the companies reputations, as users begin to flock to other social media platforms including MeWe or Parler.

Censorship is wrong. Censorship with the intention of manipulating the results of an election is even worse.

Ken is a Cyber Security Professional and author of the book Hacking of the Free. The views expressed in this post do not reflect the views of his employer or clients.

News Media Claims "Facts Not Fear" While Spreading Fear During COVID-19

What do South Korea, Maryland, Los Angeles CA, San Francisco CA, and Alabama all have in common? Apparently the same two workers in yellow suits with the same patient in a red isolation chamber have been spotted in all of these locations, according to news media. As discussed in my latest book, "Hacking of the Free", news media often uses imagery and stories designed to invoke emotion, just so they can get better ratings.

I first noticed the photo on March 3rd, when Fox 45 Baltimore ran a story about 7 Marylanders being tested for Coronavirus. I thought it was a bit excessive to have someone on a stretcher in an isolation chamber while wearing hazmat suits, just in order to test for the presence of the virus.

About a month later I see the exact same photo in another Fox 45 article. Only this time the photo is labeled as a "file photo".  While it's not uncommon for news organizations to re-use some of their own photos for future stories, this photo just stuck out to me as odd, so I started digging.