Left-Wing Populists: Voters Witnessing ‘Unaccountable Power of Silicon Valley Giants Over Flow of Information’

Left-wing populists, who, along with right-wing populists, have long warned of tech corporations’ monopoly over social media, say voters are witnessing the “unaccountable power” of Silicon Valley’s elites three weeks out from the November 3 presidential election.

On Wednesday, the New York Post published a bombshell story about Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden’s apparent interactions with his son Hunter Biden’s business associates at Burisma — a Ukrainian energy corporation where Hunter sat on the board of directors — while his father was vice president in the Obama administration.

The Post story also revealed that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is investigating emails between Hunter and Burisma executives. In response, Twitter and Facebook are censoring users from posting the story.

Glenn Greenwald, a journalist famous for chronicling the Edward Snowden case, wrote that voters are witnessing in real time how a handful of billionaire tech executives are controlling information.

“You’re seeing the immense, unchallengeable, unaccountable power of Silicon Valley giants over the flow of information,” Greenwald wrote. “Imagine if Google joins in. What’s so amazing is that they never wanted this role. It was foisted on them by people, led by journalists, demanding they censor.”

Anti-monopolist Matt Stoller, who writes the newsletter BIG, urged Republican lawmakers to join House Democrats in their recent antitrust inquiry into tech corporations such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google for their alleged anti-competitive behavior.

“FB and Twitter doing a master class for conservatives on why their faith in libertarians and monopolistic corporations was the dumbest possible choice imaginable,” Stoller wrote.

Michael Tracey, an independent journalist, called tech corporations’ censoring of negative stories about the Bidens “creepy and authoritarian” and said many, including him, have been sounding the alarm for years over the power that Silicon Valley executives have obtained in a short period of time, with little-to-no consequences by Washington, D.C. lawmakers.

“Twitter is now warning that the NY Post story on Hunter Biden is ‘unsafe,'”Tracey wrote. “You don’t even have to defend the veracity of the story to recognize how creepy and authoritarian this is.”

Krystal Ball, who hosts The Hill’s Rising morning news show, said tech corporations’ censorship of negative stories about the Bidens will eventually help prevent structural changes to corporate consolidation and monopoly power.

“This is completely insane and will 100 percent come back to bite the left. Censorship always ends up being a tool for preserving the status quo. Mark my words,” Ball wrote.

A report by the Open Markets Insitute has detailed the monopoly power that tech corporations like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple increasingly enjoy, which allows them to dominate whole sectors of the American economy with no competition.

“Dominant technology companies are increasingly using their monopoly profits not to invest in new research and development, but to acquire or bankrupt their competitors, buy back stock, hire lobbyists, or simply hoard cash,” the report notes.

“… the same four tech companies — Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple — continue to dominate the country’s tech sector,” the report continues. “To regain the balance that led to so much innovation and broad prosperity during the mid-20th century, both patent and antitrust law must be reformed.”

Analysis by Bloomberg News last year showed how concentrated corporate power by monopolistic corporations is growing dominate in the American economy. The unchecked business practices have shifted billions in wealth to the nation’s coasts, outside of middle America.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.