‘Twitter Files’ reveal ‘terrifying’ truths about the need for ‘radical transparency’:
says Palantir co-founder
Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale calls for investigations into Google, YouTube, Apple amid ‘Twitter Files’
A major technology investor has called for the break up of Big Tech, claiming the “Twitter Files” reveal “terrifying” truths about censorship and the urgent need for “radical transparency.”
“We have to investigate YouTube and Google. We have to investigate Apple,” Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale said on “Mornings with Maria” Thursday. “I’m excited for the House Republicans to do the ‘YouTube Files,’ because I bet you that’s going to be even worse. And if we don’t investigate it, it’s a huge problem for our democracy.”
The “Twitter Files” – now on part five of the ongoing series – have revealed Twitter’s collusion with the government to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, suppress conservative voices and most recently: to ban Donald Trump from using the platform.
Amid the revelations, Twitter CEO Elon Musk fired lawyer and former FBI general counsel James Baker from the company “in light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in the suppression of information important to the public dialogue.”
“These guys were meeting regularly with DHS, with [the] FBI, with all sorts of our intelligence agencies. The administration was clearly telling them what they wanted censored,” Lonsdale said. “Everyone talks about how they banned Trump, and that was obviously done inappropriately. But more than that, they’re turning down ideas. They’re turning down certain people. They’re turning up other people. Like this is hugely affecting elections. This is affecting our public square. There’s tens of millions of people that are getting different ideas.”
After the “Twitter Files” revealed the tech giant’s collusion with government to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale called for the “YouTube Files” on “Mornings with Maria” Thursday, December 15, 2022. (Getty Images)
Lonsdale detailed the kind of “monopoly power” held by tech giants like Apple and YouTube, noting that Apple can be “corrupt” in the way it decides what apps are approved for its App Store.
“They’ll tell you one thing, you work for months on it. They’ll change their mind. That kind of monopoly power, that’s not transparent, that’s not acceptable in our economy,” the Palantir co-founder argued.
The investor also called out the Federal Trade Commission head Lina Khan for pushing along Biden’s agenda and attacking big businesses if they don’t align with it.
“The FTC is killing people left and right, blocking things in the bio world right now… Illumina, real thing, it detects cancer. Illumina was going to scale it up, they could be saving thousands of people a month with their marketing engine and because they have this Big Tech bias against it, they’re blocking acquisitions that are not allowing the technology to scale up,” Lonsdale explained.
“So you’re literally saying, ‘We’re going to kill ten thousand people a year because we don’t like big tech?’ That’s not acceptable,” Lonsdale further criticized the FTC. “You can hold them accountable, you can make it transparent. But let’s not arbitrarily block the markets and capitalism from encouraging innovation.”
In order to level the playing field between and remove political bias within tech workplaces, Lonsdale called for “radical transparency.”
“There should be no ability for a company that affects more than a million people in the U.S. to decide to get to censor what it wants to. It should have to be totally transparent, exactly how it’s doing it, and it should show us within a day when it was turned down, a person or an idea. And this is the law we should be passing,” Lonsdale said.
The investor also slammed Democrats and legacy media for remaining largely silent about the “Twitter Files,” claiming they’re “gaslighting” the American public.