Opinion

O’HANDLEY: The ‘#VoxAdpocalypse’ Shows Big Tech Needs A Reason To Fear Justice

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#VoxAdpocalypse, they’re calling it on Twitter. Whatever you call it, Google’s YouTube just caved to leftist demands and dramatically increased censorship on its platform.

The story begins with far-left news site Vox enlisting its allies at sites such as BuzzFeed and HuffPost to demand that a Canadian conservative comedian be deplatformed for offending Carlos Maza, a particularly left-wing Vox vlogger.

Maza, donning the mantle of a “journalist,” accused the comedian Steven Crowder of “harassing” him. Crowder has made fun of the eminently mockable Maza on his YouTube show for years, but it was always done in a joking manner. He has also denounced the targeted harassment or doxxing of Maza by his fans, specifically requesting that they not engage in it.

Make no mistake, Maza is not a journalist, not by any meaningful definition of the word. He is, first and foremost, a pro-censorship activist — a self-proclaimed “Marxist pig” whose primary personal and professional purpose seems to be silencing conservatives and his own critics.

Before moving to Vox, Maza served at David Brock’s anti-conservative group Media Matters, having joined in order to — in his words — “take down Fox News.” His profile proudly exclaims that Tucker Carlson, the most popular cable news host in America besides Sean Hannity, “is a white supremacist.”

“Deplatforming works and we should use it way more aggressively,” he gloated in reference to an article on the authoritarian tactic’s past successes.

Maza’s hatred of conservatives extends well beyond the internet. He doesn’t believe conservatives should be allowed to speak in real life, either.

Responding to the recent trend of throwing milkshakes at politicians such as Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage and U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as they speak to constituents, Maza opined, “Milkshake them all. Humiliate them at every turn. Make them dread public organizing.”

Am I painting a complete enough picture of the kind of person to whom Google is ceding editorial control over the world’s largest video-sharing platform?

When Maza launched into an expletive-filled tirade and incited his readers into what would undoubtedly be called a “harassment campaign” if Maza were a conservative, Big Tech gave him exactly what he demanded.

As a result, YouTube “demonetized” Crowder, along with thousands of other YouTube channels — including some that don’t even include commentary — and dove into what appears to be the largest mass banning in the site’s history.

Then YouTube rewrote its entire speech policy, stuffing it full of “woke” campus activist word salad that can’t be described as anything other than an arbitrary standard under which anything the left does not like can earn a ban for “promoting hate.”

Actually, to be clear, they didn’t give Maza and his gang of cry bullies exactly what they wanted. They wanted Crowder to be completely banned, along with anyone else who makes fun of them, and — presumably, based on Facebook’s recent practices — anyone who speaks positively of Crowder.

The lay of the land, though, is clear. The left wants more censorship. Big Tech is giving it to them.

The reason is plain and simple. Big Tech fears the left. They fear the ability of activist-journalists to flood the airwaves and the internet with propaganda. They also fear, despite their cozy donor relationship with them, the thinly veiled threats from House Democrats to punish tech companies if they do not censor their users more aggressively.

Conversely, the Big Tech companies do not fear Republicans, whom they see as unlikely to actually do anything about their own constituents being silenced. Silicon Valley has long relied on conservatives’ natural aversion to the regulation of and intervention in private companies, but they’ve clearly begun to abuse that freedom.

Solving the problem will be no simple task. The power of the institutional left in Washington, in the media, and in the halls of Silicon Valley’s office campuses themselves can hardly be overstated.

In the meantime, luckily, there’s something else they might fear: antitrust enforcement. After all, the political bias of Google and the other tech giants is only worrisome because of their monopolistic dominance of the modern public square.

As the iconic Republican President Teddy Roosevelt wrote about monopolies back in 1910, “[O]ne of the most sinister manifestations of great corporate wealth … has been its tendency to interfere and dominate in politics.”

Big Tech has undoubtedly given in to that meddlesome tendency, and that’s why the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission’s decision to move forward with a long-overdue investigation is so important. Big Tech needs to fear real justice more than it fears the political left.

Rogan O’Handley (@DC_Draino) is a former entertainment lawyer who now posts conservative political commentary and news online. He earned two bachelor degrees, magna cum laude, in political science and criminal justice from Northeastern University. He earned his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School.


The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.