Just over six years ago, I attended Google’s Political Innovation Summit in New York City. Over the course of the day, it dawned on me that, in the not-too-distant future, Google and other social media companies like Facebook and Twitter would have the power to control and manipulate information flow in unforeseen and dramatic ways. That power would give the tech giants the ability to manipulate elections and policy debates and even to re-define what free speech actually means.
That future has arrived.
In the last week alone we’ve seen Google attempt to make a co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, “disappear.” Why? Moore is an unrepentant skeptic of man-made global warming. He’s been extraordinarily critical not only of the radical greens that have taken over the environmental movement in general but also specifically critical of Greenpeace.