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Charles Hugh Smith
The blowback is social and political: people are starting to question the social and political costs of these tech darlings' dominance and the billions in profits they reap.
The typical corporation can buy political influence, but Facebook and Google are manipulating the machinery of democracy itself. That's a much more dangerous type of power than buying political influence or manipulating public opinion by openly publishing biased "news."
We all understand how Corporate Media undermines democracy: recall how every time Bernie Sanders won a Democratic primary in 2016, The New York Times and The Washington Post "reported" the news in small typeface in a sidebar, while every Hillary Clinton primary win was trumpeted in large headlines at the top of page one.