The new 'transparency' act leaves control of what users see in the hands of Google and other digital giants.
Internal documents and secret recordings continue to make abundantly clear what many already knew and others strongly suspected about Google and other digital goliaths; that Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and others manipulate their content and their users.
Stepping into the fray, Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) has boasted that his new bill - the Filter Bubble Transparency Act - is the silver bullet for bursting user information filter bubbles, the predictable information dead ends that reinforce users' pre-existing perspectives. He would have us believe that the use of personal user data by search engine algorithms is the real problem with the internet.
But this issue is the least of the problems that users face online. The bill's co-sponsors hope we've forgotten - or never knew - that Google and the rest are not the unbiased, politically neutral information sources or social media platforms that they (so poorly) pretend to be. Far from it.
Comment: The 'powers that be' in the US want to maintain control over social media to shape public perception, and as tech giants are part of the US government hydra they will be given free rein to continue their mission. The bill is more likely a ruse to placate the sheeple while nothing of substance changes.