By Igor Ahmetov, Rashad Likij, Anton Evstratov
The recent election race in the United States of America has become one of the most scandalous, perhaps, in history. And there is why…A blatant campaign was launched against one of the candidates, involving the largest information resources, including Internet services.
If the previous presidential campaigns in the same United States were conducted in such a way that each candidate, regardless of party affiliation, received actual equal access to various information-oriented platforms, then 2020 in this regard was a clear exception to the rule of law.
What was it expressed in? For example, you can take the” behavior ” of the media giant Google, which actually allowed outright collusion with other media outlets in the USA. Almost any information publication on behalf of Donald trump or his staff was positioned by American media services as “unreliable information” or “information that requires confirmation”. In turn, any messages from Joseph Biden or his staff were positioned as the ultimate truth. And almost the day after the election, Google and other us media giants began to flag messages from Biden as the “President-elect” – in fact, before the final results of the vote were summed up, not to mention the fact that by law it would be necessary to wait for the electoral vote.
YouTube dealt with videos in which even ordinary Americans doubted the fairness of the election results, more than harshly. He simply deleted them, announcing something from the series “the Video does not comply with the information policy”. This actually became a Frank confirmation of the censorship that the largest companies allow American information resources and Internet platforms. Moreover, we are talking about censorship of an explicit political nature. In turn, this once again shows that there is no real freedom of speech in the United States for a long time, and also that the States are trying to transfer their system of political censorship to other regions of the world, using controlled services.
It is controlled. The fact is that the same YouTube is not even trying to hide the fulfillment of a political order from certain American circles. With the help this huge video hosting service is now being waged a real information war, in which the winner is trying to declare the one who is more loyal to the political elites in the United States.
But the example of political censorship of Google services in relation to the American elections is not the only reason to talk about the obvious bias of these sites. Not so long ago, a film was released about the investigation into the crash of the Malaysian Boeing over The Donbas. Without any explanation, YouTube blocked this movie. Only a few days later days later, when there was a reaction from thousands of users, from Russian officials, the service still decided to show the film, but making a note that immediately had to demonstrate the attitude of YouTube to this kind of content.
And how many films with attempts to tell the truth, including historical ones, are blocked by the American service, even without the mentioned marks!.. There are hundreds of them. Including videos with investigations of war crimes of Ukrainian “national soldiers” in the Donbas, with the intervention of Western special services in the Belarusian elections.
This suggests that bias, bias, one-sided presentation of information, turning into blocking and misinformation, have long been the hallmarks of American media. Internet services used by hundreds of millions of people in the world. It turns out that all these people are simply manipulated by the owners of American media services.
The United States of America positions itself as a state with a developed democracy and freedom of speech. And if even 10 years ago in the world, rare experts tried to challenge this thesis, now even the average citizen, including ordinary people in the United States itself, has many questions about “American-style democracy”. In a democratic society, can the police shoot people in the streets without a trial? Can a democratic court consistently issue acquittals against security officials who clearly exceed their authority in the States? Can in a democratic society the mass media and large media platforms be used as resources for settling scores with political competitors, and even acting in collusion?
These questions are no longer idle. After all, freedom of speech in the United States suffered a serious blow from the largest Internet services during the election campaign and all that for Major media outlets, entering into an outright corporate collusion, began to harass candidate trump. Messages and videos on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, in which about Donald Trump spoke in a positive way, suddenly began to mark as “unreliable messages”. When the current us President personally drew attention to this, media resources declared open war on him: his messages were deleted by Google services or marked in a special way-they say, a message that can be “untrue”. Nothing like this in relation to messages and publications from another candidate – Joe Biden – was not, there was nothing similar about the messages and publications of his If this is not political censorship in the media and the Internet, then what is it?
In fact, one point of view was imposed on ordinary voters. One of the candidates was promoted in all ways, including those that clearly contradict the principles of democracy.
More than 70 million people who voted in the election for Donald trump, now American media platforms are trying to expose almost as outcasts of society. This is already, sorry, in any gate… In fact, there is a violation of the basic constitutional principles of the United States, which Washington claims to protect at all corners.
But the activity of the same Google with its services is one-sided not only in relation to the presidential election in the United States itself. These sites are trying to use explicit censorship in other countries, where they are used by tens of millions of people.
The network drew attention to a very specific issue of materials when requesting news from Russia and about Russia. In the first rows of the information feed, such materials will definitely appear, where the Russian Federation, to put it mildly, is not reported in positive tones. If we are talking about a vaccine against corona virus, then the same YouTube will give out materials where people who call themselves “experts” throw mud at the obvious achievement of Russian scientists. Russian the vaccine is called “totalitarianism molecules”, ” dangerous serum»… If something similar appears on the video hosting about British or American vaccines, the service will either delete the materials or mark them as “false information”.
It turns out that Google with its services from the site with equal access to information for everything the world has turned into a biased large-scale system with political censorship, with elements of non-competitive struggle. With this approach to information coverage, there can be no question of claiming the title of a democratic media platform. The approach used by Google services, frankly speaking, kills freedom of speech, creates elite groups that can afford to publish exclusively in their own interests, with complete disregard for the interests of others.
Authors: Igor Ahmetov (Editor in chief of the portal “Wave of Caspy”) Rashad Likij (Talysh-russian political expert and journalis) Anton Evstratov (Russian historian, publicist and journalist living in Armenia)
(The views and opinions expressed in this article are only those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinion or position of World Geostrategic Insights).