Twitter is apologizing for what it calls an "engagement issue" after many conservatives reported their posts' likes and retweets were disappearing.
Conservatives for years have accused Facebook of censoring comments, and now Microsoft has unveiled a "NewsGuard" plugin to label hand-select outlets with a green check mark or a red exclamation point for sites like Drudge Report and Fox News.
“The tech industry as whole has been very presumptuous in assuming they know more and they know what's best for the citizenry than we do,” Jeff McCall, professor of communications at DePauw University. “Until they get off that high horse or somebody is able to bring them down a notch or two, they're going to continue to feel that way.”
“None of them have been sufficiently transparent, they all want to make decisions about what the electorate and the citizenry as a whole should be able to see. This leads us to the overarching question of who are they to be able to decide this stuff?”
McCall says the only way to fight them is in the public sphere.
“They need to get some very vocal people out there who have their interest in mind. That might be corporate leaders, it might be social critics, it could be governmental leaders, but somehow they have to get the word out there that this is not a fair fight.”
He fears nothing will change unless Congress intervenes.