Alex Marlow at Masters of the Universe Town Hall: ‘You Are Not Consumers, You Are the Product’

Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow hosted the “Masters of the Universe” town hall tonight, where he discussed the threat of major tech companies alongside a host of panelists.

Addressing the packed room at the event, Alex Marlow said: “Welcome everyone, I’m Alexander Marlow the Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart.com and the Breitbart News Network and I’m so happy that we’re here in New Orleans, Louisiana for our first ever town hall.” As the crowd cheered, Marlow continued saying: “So there are some people we wanna thank before we get started, Andreas Restaurant, incredible venue for us and we’re really happy to be here, our partners that made this event possible is a group called Free Our Internet, Christie-Lee McNally is the president and their communications director, Chad Wilkinson, honestly we would not be here without that group.”

“Also we want to thank the Hayride, Louis Gervich, Republican Women in Louisiana and also Randy and his team who’s doing all the legwork for us. On the Breitbart.com side, our COO Jon Kahn made this happen along with CEO Larry Solov and also our researchers Allum Bokhari and Colin Madine deserve a special shoutout.” Marlow continued, “I know a lot of the Breitbart crew is happy to be away from LA or any other coastal town where they’re from because we do love middle America, our populism is legit at Breitbart and we think these people in Louisiana, in the South, in the Midwest, you guys are the backbone of the country and we’re very happy to come speak to you.”

“So, the topic is the Masters of the Universe, we’re talking about the Silicon Valley elite. Free speech in this day and age is something that is being redefined constantly and is in control of a handful of big tech oligarchs, largely hailing from Silicon Valley. They’ve accumulated so much power and so much influence at such a rapid rate, that it goes so far beyond our ability to regulate, it’s even beyond our ability to have a conversation about what they’re doing.”

Marlow turned to the audience asking, “how many people here have ever sent Facebook any money or sent Google any money?” members of the crowd looked around as Marlow said, “literally just sent them a check or bought a Facebook product.” As a few members of the crowd hesitantly raised their hands, Marlow continued: “I’m seeing a couple of hands, so we’ve got maybe a thousand people here, I’m seeing maybe five percent. Ok, I’m surprised it’s even that high.”

“So how did these guys get 50 or 60 or 70 billion dollars a piece?” An audience member shouted, “selling our info” to which Marlow replied: “selling our info is the correct answer and that’s what we’re here to talk about tonight. You guys are not the consumers, you guys are actually the product, you guys are being sold and it’s being done completely clandestinely. Never in the history of the American republic and really the Western world have so few unelected people achieved so much power and so much influence in such a short period of time and they’ve done it almost entirely clandestinely and without free flow of information. They know where you are right now and yet we don’t even know their names.”

Marlow stated: “It’s an unbelievable thing and we are going to begin a discussion that will hopefully continue for day or weeks on end, months or years, however long it takes because we think this is the pre-eminent free speech issue o four time at Breitbart News and hopefully you guys will learn a little bit tonight.