Big Tech like Apple STILL hasn’t gotten the – Latest News
If Apple CEO Tim Cook instructed his Apple News minions to take their left thumb off the scale, they’re not listening: Congress and the Federal Trade Commission have more purpose than ever to raise hell.
A month after we flagged the blatant political skew of the Apple information feed, the tech giant’s aggregator for normal readers provided fewer than 2% of its high tales from retailers seen as right-leaning.
Fine, that’s up from actually 0% the month earlier than, however eight out of 560 tales is a joke.
These numbers come courtesy of the eagle-eyed Media Research Center, which has been exposing lefty information bias for literal many years.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson warned Cook final month that this bias might violate consumer-protection legal guidelines; it appears the Cupertino crew doesn’t care.
Content suppression like that is dangerous for customers as a result of it hinders them accessing tales they could need.
It’s dangerous for the information biz — large platforms shouldn’t choose winners primarily based on ideology.
And it’s horrible for the nation, cementing partisan divides and maintaining people caught in an echo chamber.
Consider how The Post acquired locked out of social media for daring to publish true, verified (and completely vindicated) tales off of Hunter Biden’s laptop computer.
Get opinions and commentary from our columnists
Subscribe to our each day Post Opinion publication!
Thanks for signing up!
Meanwhile, “mainstream” outfits like The New York Times did their best to cover the harm of Team Biden’s open borders whereas “responsible” lefty outfits akin to the Guardian overtly ran interference for Hamas post-Oct.-7.
It’s not simply Apple.
The similar points pervade different tech giants, like Google and Meta, (although Meta’s seen latest enchancment).
Indeed, bias-spotter Allsides (a genuinely nonpartisan outfit) present in 2023 that throughout the media-aggregation panorama, websites with Post-like politics get majorly short shrift.
The White House has already barked; if Apple doesn’t form up it must chunk, onerous.
Why ought to the FTC exist in any respect if it might probably’t shield towards shady and misleading business practices like this?
We get that Cook and his No. 2, Eddie Cue, don’t need any of this; the bother is decrease down.
But no matter what else the high canine have on their plates, they need to get their minions in line earlier than it turns into a nightmare for the complete nation; getting this proper is a service they need to carry out for society.
Their colleagues throughout the tech world have related duties: Big Tech should get its thumb off the scale, or face the penalties.
