I am obviously not their target reader, and yet my news.google.com feed contains plenty of Fox propaganda.
Google obviously has no qualms about a "moron tax"
sheesh, look at Youtube. it's full of alt-right tripe.
Were this directed at a tiny ideological fraction of the population it could be OK, but we are talking about give or take half of the voters of the USA, UK, Poland, Hungary, Austria, etc., etc.
And when Google has such a near monopoly on massive swathes of the web that is quite concerning.
Second, in a free and modern society it is ok to have diametrical oppossed views to any other Group. Which is an integral part of Democracy.
Funny enough, there are always people, mostly with pretty radical views, that are severly infuriated by contrarian views. The other way round it is just fine.
Alt right conservatism is not a mainstream ideology anywhere in the world. Nor will it ever the way things are going.
Strong border controls are quite obviously supported by far more than 15% of the UK population (and I say that as an immigrant to the UK) - look at the Brexit vote.
Ultimately we are discussing the visible rage and despisement towards the winnning side of a national US election vote. That is incredibly concerning coming from a company as powerful as Google, and we know the same sentiment is shared across Hollywood and the mass media.
And given Trump’s anti-immigrant stance Google executives being immigrants themselves would have every right to voice their concern.
Re: approval ratings, its a moot point. Trump has enjoyed generally similar approval ratings to Obama (at most single digit percentage points lower) and ultimately won a free and fair election in a first world Republic.
Having the leaders of a global monopoly megacorporation display this kind of disdain for the elected leader of the country and everyone who supports him, and (by implication) similar populist leaders across Europe (and their supporters), is extremely, deeply, disconcerting.
And I hope you are not seriously stating that a company cannot have political views opposed to the government? It's either a democratic election (to have a legitimate government) which implies different opinions regardless of majorites or not (so that nobody can oppose the government). You cannot have it both ways.
> We owe no consideration to deliberately-destructive trolls...
Oh man, here we go. Look, there are trolls and there are populists and fascists and neo-Nazis and anarchists and racists and scumbags and dickheads and all of those NAMES out there. Yeah! Fuck those NAMES! BURN!
..it fixes nothing to piss further into the pool. And then to turn around and call it fixed, or not fixable. How does that fix anything to be nasty right back and then convince yourself you can ignore them? That by ignoring them you are ignoring all this nastiness? Don't you think your nastiness validates their nastiness, even if you think anti-nastiness nastiness will make things better? That's a trap. We're all devalued when we inject even more bad karma into this crap ball.
We need to define ourselves by what we want the culture to be, not by the people who think are our political enemies.
So, how about instead: we actually define what is acceptable in our culture and where the line is. And then when people step over the line, we don't demonize them as bad people who seek to wreck all that is holy and good, we point out how they violated the acceptable cultural norms in a non-aggressive, non-offensive way. And then we consistently return to actions and words and not assumptions of motives and further othering of people. That way, instead of the dialog being about people's feelings and motivations, it's about how they violated the norms by actually doing something that is in direct violation of our acceptable norms, e.g. personal insults.
> Breitbart, OTOH, is precisely a harmful entity seeking to undermine all that is decent and good.
See. You are getting precisely nowhere with this, unless you consider polarization to be somewhere. I mean, seriously. What the heck do you expect? This is no dialog. They're just all bad people who hate, hate, hate. So you hate them back. Cycle.
Also, you are forgetting it's a two way street. The other side is calling for the destruction of the press as well.
The only difference is that CNN and NYTimes have the power to destroy other press. Smaller companies like Breitbart and Infowars cannot.
How about we protect free speech and free press?
> Hard to deal in good faith under those circumstances.
Exactly. It's why nobody trusts media anymore. It's a real concern for society. And nobody in media appears to want to address it. Rather they are doubling down and making the situation even worse.
“Deliberately destructive trolls” is interesting phrasing when held up against “roasted dead orphans.” If we owe no consideration to the former, you prove yourself such with the latter.
Also, why are so many foreigners so obsessed over US politics. I swear every top political comment on every social media platform seems to be from a brit or a canadian.
Everything is going to be okay. Trump is going to be gone in 2 or 6 years at most. You'll have another president to be angry about. Trump isn't the end of the world.
I thought people couldn't get any crazier after obama's election and the birther/tea party movement. Boy was I proved wrong.
We owe no consideration to deliberately-destructive trolls seeking to undermine all notions of civility and social progress merely to feed Rupert Murdochs empire of faeces further banquet tables full of roasted dead orphans.
Breitbart, OTOH, is precisely a harmful entity seeking to undermine all that is decent and good.