After years of piling ferocious pressure on Big Tech to behave as expected and contribute its bit to the political cause shared by the likes of CNN, in the wake of this US election cycle, this kind of criticism will probably persist just to keep these companies on their toes.
Slowly but surely, attention is turning to what’s known as “alt tech” – i.e., independent social platforms and services, especially as they are becoming the new home for those who have been unable to have their voices heard or even participate, as they are in recent years getting deplatformed and banned in droves by Twitter, Google, and Facebook.
One such alt tech network that is gaining traction is Parler and this is where some conservatives are now going when they decide to leave Twitter and Facebook.
Considering that, as users, many have had extremely negative experiences due to censorship and bias against them, you wouldn’t expect a “progressive” outpost like CNN to have an issue with them now leaving, or alternative platforms existing.
After all, in a true democracy, when it comes to the (social) media scene – the more the merrier. But when “pundits” like Brian Stelter and Pamela Brown put their talking heads together, they came up with some absurd conclusions: that the rise of alternative platforms is what’s introducing “echo chambers, bubbles and bunkers” onto the scene, which is bad for democracy and bad for the US.
“I think big picture Pamela, here’s the concerning trend line here – people are going more and more into their own echo chambers, more and more into their own bubbles, especially Trump voters,” said Stelter from his own echo chamber.
“Mhmm, that’s what I was gonna say,” Brown said.
“There’s this new social media app called Parler getting a lot of attention because conservatives are leaving, saying they’re leaving Twitter and Facebook, going off to Parler because they believe Parler is a safer space for them,” Stelter continued. “What we’re seeing is even more of a bunker mentality in right-wing media, and ultimately that’s not good for the country.”
Here’s the true news: echo chambers have existed for years, and it’s Big Tech, not startups attempting to compete against them, that are to blame. Big Tech and mainstream media has brought echo chambers to the internet and has been ruthlessly cultivating them for years with algorithms manipulating what people see in their feeds, and by removing non-conforming users and their content.
Nevermind CNN’s hypocrisy of attempting to vilify alt tech after supporting the very censorship that is driving users away from centralized giants and towards the likes of Parler and Gab.
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