Top companies in information technology are facing strong demands to stop political bias and their oppression of free speech.
In a recent post, President Donald Trump said if Section 230 of the Defense Authorization Act is not terminated, he will veto the bill when it comes his way.
Section 230 treats Big Tech companies like platforms for free speech rather than as a publisher, even though Twitter and Facebook choose to take down certain content.
Chief Marketing Officer of Agency Partner Interactive Adam Rizzieri said efforts from the president and Congress will make a difference in the long run. But added that nothing will change unless Americans take action.
“At the end of the day, we are battling a big fight here; Big Tech is very, very powerful. Google, Facebook, Twitter, these are companies that have just tremendous, tremendous amounts of legal and financial resources. They also have all the information in the world, right? So, when you’ve got information, when you have finances, when you have extremely smart people working for you, that makes for a very strong fight,” said Rizzieri.
Following election day, Parler, an alternative social platform to Twitter, saw a jump from around 4 million to 8 million members in one week.
And the number of active users increased from 500,000 to 4 million.
Despite the trend of people leaving mainstream platforms, Rizzieri said more needs to be done.
“I think when it comes to ensuring that these platforms kind of feel the pain, it requires a huge marketing effort to yield the adoption of these other choices that are on the market. Of course, there’s Rumble to answer YouTube, there’s Parler to answer Twitter. There are other solutions that are out there that we could look to that claim to support a truly free and unbiased conversation when it comes to moderation, specifically,” said Rizzieri.
Rizzieri also talked about other ways Americans can take a stand against Big Tech censorship.
“There are a lot of options out there when it comes to online marketing. If you choose to work a digital marketing agency such as mine or any others, they can make recommendations about other third-party platforms that are highly valuable and that can help you acquire the customers that you need to run your business,” said Rizzieri.
Rizzieri said that to strengthen marketing efforts, platforms like Parler need an active user base and financial support to keep up with Big Tech.
