How Tech Platforms Were Dragged Into America’s Political War
From www.businessinsider.com
2021-10-02 13:15:31
Excerpt:
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Lawmakers have weaponized tech firms and their content moderation decisions to drive agendas.
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It’s the culmination of a slew of factors, like the post-2016 techlash and the Trump administration.
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Experts say tech animosity has become “a core Republican tenet,” and progressives want more rules.
Tech companies haven’t had an easy time lately, with lawsuits and critique lobbed at them.
But the platforms have also been dragged into a new war in recent years: lawmakers using them and the decisions they make as punching bags to drive their political agendas.
Experts told Insider it’s the product of the post-2016 election realization that online platforms were not all benign, a Trump-era political marketing test, internet platforms’ shift from their historical hands-off approach to content moderation, and mounting polarization in a country where a political tug-of-war was growing ever nastier.
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