Bill Maher Slams Social Media Manipulation as Voting in 2020 'Really Wasn't a Free Choice in Every Sense of the Word'

Bill Maher slams big tech censorship.

It seems to me the country has gotten itself into quite the pickle. We’ve allowed the national conversation to be hosted by private companies that have decided they should determine whose voices are heard.

And it’s getting worse.

If we remain on the same platforms and they continue to pick and choose, we’re headed toward an America we should never want to be.

On Friday’s episode of HBO’s Real Time, host Bill Maher pointed to an incredible example of social media selection.

Bill welcomed Google employee Tristan Harris, who The Atlantic has called the “closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience.”

Tristan’s website asks, “How do you ethically steer the thoughts and actions of two billion people’s minds every day?”

My answer: You don’t.

Apropos, Bill brought up the titanic Twitter suspension of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan.

As reported by Fox News, here’s how Maher put it:

“Can I read to you what was blocked on Twitter just last week? This is from the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan. I don’t really agree with this comment, but this is what he said. He was talking about they’re continuing to build the wall every day, which is his domain. ‘Every mile helps us stop ‘gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs from entering our country. It’s a fact. Walls work.’”

“I can take issue with some things in there,” Bill said, “but it’s an opinion! This should not have been blocked!”

Correctamundo.

We’re living in a progressively safe-space world, where safety is apparently gained by muting non-left-wing notions.

“This feeds into that saying, ‘You just don’t want to hear anything that you don’t agree with!’ And this is a platform! Twitter is about expressing opinions. And here’s somebody who expresses an opinion, albeit I don’t agree with it, but then it’s like, ‘Well, my opinion doesn’t agree with your opinion, so you can’t talk on my platform about opinions.’”

It’s very bad.

Or, if you’re Bill Maher, there are other words:

“That’s f—-d up, too.”

The Daily Wire notes that Tristan thinks you’ve gotta massage the messages:

Harris, who appeared in the documentary The Social Dilemma, a film about Big Tech’s control over the information we see, told Maher that social media companies struggle between “freedom of speech” and “freedom of reach.” He told Maher that just because users have a “football stadium-size audience” doesn’t mean the companies will let them say what they want “without accountability.”

But Bill asked, “So what is the answer?” Maher then asked. “How do you protect free speech while not looking like you’re censoring? … There is no bulls— detector.”

Of course, you can’t protect free speech by censoring it.

And Maher observed, “The companies have now taken moves that we never saw up until a few months ago.”

Meanwhile, despite an intensified lockdown on what can be expressed, this post is still up and running with no flags on the play:

Rush Limbaugh has spend decades spewing dangerous anti-Black racism.

Now he has cancer…

I know we shouldn't celebrate one's misfortunes….

but

#PartyOverHere pic.twitter.com/NVI1mVg2hW

— Tariq Nasheed 🇺🇸 (@tariqnasheed) February 3, 2020

Social media is the new watercooler, but conservative participants are frequently being told to stay at their desks.

And the control of information has doubtlessly had an impact on the election — just consider the Bluebird’s stifling of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden story.

On Saturday, notable talk show man Dan Bongino chimed in on the mess:

“We cannot allow another election to pass with Twitter, Fakebook, and Google in charge of our Republic. [Their] unprecedented efforts at speech suppression and ideological intimidation were destructive beyond comparison.”

We cannot allow another election to pass with Twitter, Fakebook, and Google in charge of our Republic. They’re unprecedented efforts at speech suppression and ideological intimidation were destructive beyond comparison.

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) November 7, 2020

Speaking to Tristan, Bill summed it up:

“Everyone who voted thinks they made a free and fair choice. … But what you’re getting at is that, because of the manipulation that goes on from social media — where most people get their news now — it really wasn’t a free choice in every sense of the word, was it?”

Tristan: