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Dan Bongino is the latest casualty in the war on America’s First Freedom known as the First Amendment.
He was demonetized and suspended by YouTube.
WND is all-too familiar with how this goes. We have been permanently demonetized by YouTube and its parent company, Google.
What did Bongino do to deserve this fate? He was accused of spreading COVID misinformation – specifically by saying “masks are useless in preventing the coronavirus’s spread.”
This is insane. Bongino is a commentator – a good one, a Fox News star, a writer of bestselling books. But, then again, Donald Trump, the former president, was permanently banned by Twitter. So, no one is safe from Big Tech – no one.
Another powerful voice quashed.
Bongino will survive, for certain. But WND might not. Our fate is a lot less secure, to put it mildly.
“Too Big To Fail”
Big Tech is, as they say, too big to fail – bigger, apparently, than the constitutional right to free speech.
According to a federal lawsuit, Google and Facebook made a secret deal in 2018 that gave both firms unfair competitive advantage in digital ad space. The deal, which was brokered by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, was approved by Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg.
This is one example of many that shows how Big Tech is involved in a conspiracy to destroy the journalism industry.
The newly unredacted suit also claims that Google duped publishers and advertisers for years about how it prices and executes its ad auctions, creating secret algorithms that hiked prices for buyers while deflating revenue for some advertisers.
That’s price fixing.
Likewise, Google used the extra cash it got from inflated ad prices to improperly expand its monopoly, according to the complaint, which cites internal correspondence from Google employees. Some Google workers said the practices amounted to using “insider information” to grow the business, according to the suit.
Suing Google
The allegations were made by the attorneys general for Texas, 14 other states and Puerto Rico, who are suing Google in federal court for antitrust violations. Facebook and its parent company, Meta Platforms, are not defendants in the lawsuit.
In December 2020, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton took the lead in filing a lawsuit against Google, accusing it of using anti-competitive means to gain dominance over the digital ad space.
Both companies insist there is nothing illegal about the agreement.
The original December 2020 lawsuit was filed at around the same time that the Department of Justice submitted its own antitrust complaint against Google. The Department of Justice claimed Google has long broken the law in its quest to remain “the gateway to the internet,” and has disadvantaged competitors in an effort to sell more online search ads.
Last month, more than 200 newspapers filed suit against Facebook and Google, who were accused of unfairly manipulating the advertising market and siphoning away their revenue.
Thought Crimes!
Congress continues to hold hearings on Big Tech. Expect there to be more pushes for legislation that not only enshrines censorship but the entire idea of thought-crime itself. As we’ve seen already, Big Tech is more than willing to bend to the will of their leftist allies in Congress. With an election coming up, expect there to be more calls to ban and censor so-called “misinformation.”
This week the Jan. 6 committee made a dangerous attack against free speech online. It issued subpoenas to four major Big Tech companies – in the name of stopping “extremism.” The entire argument is that you aren’t allowed to question the 2020 election, and any platform that allowed those questions needs to be censored.
Jan. 6 and the midterms are Big Tech’s latest excuses to push their de-platforming agenda. Censors use any excuse to silence opposition – COVID-19, the Capitol fracas, elections, etc. They don’t really care about the issues, they only want the power to control speech.
This is more than a little sickening to me, as I observe the death of the free press while Washington fiddles.
What will it take to defang Big Tech?
What will it take to save the First Freedom?
What will it take to save WND?
Prosper and Grow
That’s part of my frustration. I want this enterprise to grow, not just survive.
Maybe you’re thinking right about now, “I would like to help, Joseph, but I don’t have any money. I’m broke, too. The economy is killing me, too.”
There are ways every single person reading this letter can help me and the entire WND team today – even, as I’ll explain below, if you literally don’t have two nickels to put together. Here are seven ways you can help:
Ways You Can Help
1. First and foremost, if my plea has resonated with you and you feel moved to help, please consider supporting WND and all we do with a donation. We could really use it right now. You can make contributions for as little as $3 and as much as $5,000 at our online store.
2. You can mail us a check if you prefer. Just send it to WND, P.O. Box 100, 580 E Street, Hawthorne, NV 89415-0100.
3. Would you like to make a tax-deductible contribution? You can do so online by supporting the IRS-approved, 501(c)3 nonprofit charity, the WND News Center. Or you can mail us your tax-deductible donation by making your check out to WND News Center and mailing it to: WND News Center, P.O. Box 100, 580 E Street, Hawthorne, NV 89415-0100.
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7. And then there’s one last thing you can do: PRAY FOR ME, pray for our whole team! I KNOW IT WORKS!
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