We are quickly moving towards two internet universes, one controlled by liberal and leftist tech giants, the other controlled by upstart conservative services providing a refuge for deplatformed, demonetized, and throttled conservatives.
This emerging decoupling is wholly a product of deplatforming of non-leftists at Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. We recently covered how WordPress.com cut off The Conservative Treehouse while Mailchimp cut off the Northern Virginia Tea Party. We covered the development in Prepare for the Great Decoupling – Deplatforming moves downstream to WordPress.com and Mailchimp.
Demonitization is a subset of deplatforming, a way to deprive creators of an income stream from a platform. Another form of demonetization is cutting advertisers off from generating revenue at a website, TV, or radio show. That has been the preferred method for Media Matters and others in attacking Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other conservative media.
Dan Bongino is a big name in emerging conservative media, and a longtime friend of Legal Insurrection. We covered his political races dating back to 2012 from his earlier life, and have watched as his media career took off with his podcast, Bongino.com, The Bongino Report, and regular appearances on Fox News.
Politico ran a hit piece this morning about Dan, portraying him as someone who burst on the scene by peddling post-election conspiracy theories, Dan Bongino leads the MAGA field in stolen-election messaging:
Bongino — a former police officer and Secret Service agent who was a latecomer to the talk-show world — is the surprise leader in the far-right media sweepstakes set off by Trump’s refusal to concede the election. While the president’s chances of clinging to power remain wafer thin, the prospect of a new conspiracy theory that could dominate right-wing discourse for four years is not being ignored by the pundits, podcasters and mini-moguls who populate MAGA-world.
Only ignorant or malicious liberal journalists could not know that Dan’s star has been rising for years, particularly this year. To attribute his success to post-election posturing is deceptive and false. But I suspected something else was up regarding the focus of the Politico article on election contests — that is an excuse being used by social media giants to ban or restrict many people who question how the election was conducted and the vote count.
Read the rest at: Deplatforming
