PragerU

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United States
Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA
Since PragerU is now suing Youtube and Google for alleged discrimination, I figured it's about time to make a thread about PragerU. If you don't already know what PragerU (Prager University) is, it's a youtube channel/website that is one of the prominent and up-and-coming conservative media sources at the moment, having 2.5M YouTube subscribers and over 600k Instagram subscribers.

PragerU was founded by Dennis Prager, a far-right political commentator and owned/funded by the Wilkes family, one of the richest names in hydraulic fracking. PragerU claims to be an educational platform which has published nearly 1,000 5-minute courses which supposedly teach you "everything you need to know" about a certain topic, taught by "some of the best minds out there". They claim that their content is nonpartisan and unbiased and provokes viewers to take a new perspective and becoming more informed about the world and it's issues. Sounds great on paper, right?

Yeah, nope. PragerU is pure right-wing propaganda. At best, their content is simply biased or subjective, and at worst, it's knowingly dishonest, instead teaching false and dangerous "facts", whether it be about politics, religion, global issues, world history, and even psychology. But why is PragerU so dangerous, even more so than Fox News and Breitbart (and this is the same reason it is growing in popularity, too)? Because it presents itself in a purely factual and unbiased way, and deceives it's viewers into thinking that it's an actual educational platform. First off, it isn't; PragerU isn't a university or any other type of academic institution. Unlike other right-wing news sources, PragerU refuses to admit it's overt bias. Dennis Prager makes it clear that he is an ivy-league scholar, and those who star in his PragerU videos tend to be well-educated and also racially and ethnically diverse too. The ideas presented in PragerU videos are presented in a very Ted talk-ish way, with an advanced vocabulary and non-sensational manner. As a result, millions of viewers (mainly millenials and teens), fall down what I call the "Prager U rabbit hole". The viewers think that what's taught in PragerU "courses" is always correct (despite being deceptive right-wing propaganda), and a result, view other, more extreme types of right wing rhetoric as correct, also. Now, PragerU doesn't have any overtly racist, sexist, LGBTphobic, or Islamophobic videos, but videos about these issues do contain many "dog-whistles", which in essence is presenting a racist/sexist/LGBTphobic/Islamophobic idea but in a very casual and non-controversial way. For example, a PragerU video may blame Islam for all of the Middle East's problems by using misleading "data" and drawing false conclusions, rather than stating "Islam is bad" or something of that sort. My point is, PragerU is not overtly bigoted, but it is a gateway to the extremist right. Many of those who support PragerU are the same types of people who support InfoWars, or buy into alt-right talking points like "White Genocide" or "The Great Replacement" or those that find excuses for white supremacy or islamophobia around the globe.

To get an idea, here are some of the dangerous and flat-out misleading talking points presented in the nearly 1,000 PragerU courses. Yes, I've watched quite a handful of these, just to get an idea of how wrong PragerU actually is.
  • Fossil fuels are actually good, and we should be using more of them.
  • GMOs are good for both the environment and the consumer.
  • God is real and there is scientific data prove this, that is "little known".
  • Morality cannot exist without religion.
  • Secular countries are inherently bad and America must never be one.
  • Black people in the United states must be conservative if they want to see a better future for their race.
  • It's leftists who are actually racist, not conservatives.
  • Larger government is always bad.
  • Islam is the root cause of nearly every issue plaguing the Middle East.
  • Israel is the most moral nation on Earth.
  • Climate change is a hoax created by the "Left".
  • Men are actually treated worse than women in the United States, and this starts at a young age.
  • Britain had the right to colonize nations all over the world as it was for "the greater good".
  • Speech of the wealthy and big corporations should count more than speech of the common people.
  • Money should be in politics (this video essentially defended political corruption)
  • The Democratic Party never switched and should apologize for the KKK, the Confederacy, and other forms of racism.
  • Islam promotes violence.
  • There is no wage gap between men and women, and that men and women are totally equal.
  • It is a woman's job to do for a man.
  • The "suicide of Europe" is allowing so many Muslims to enter (essentially the Great Replacement conspiracy theory).
  • College discourages freedom of thought and instead makes it's students a leftist hive mind.
  • The media lied or exaggerated what happened in Charlottesville.
  • Black people in political or corporate power actually do worse for black people as a race.
  • People are increasingly taught to "hate Jews", and anti-semitism is growing in the name of pro-Palestine.
  • Big corporations actually do act in the interest of the people, definitely not putting profits first.
  • The alt-right really isn't a big deal.
Here are some of their worst/ most controversial videos:











https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T_P14JjMcM

So yeah, PragerU is suing Google and YouTube for alleged discrimination. They allege that Youtube has restricted and demonetized over 50 of it's courses, because YouTube is supposedly anti-conservative, ant-Israel, and inherently anti-truth. They also claim that Google restricts and hides PragerU content in searches, another deliberate "attack" on their values.

My thoughts are simple: PragerU doesn't stand a chance. YouTube and Google, for whatever reason why they are censoring PragerU, are doing the right thing. Being that they are privately owned companies, they have the right do this legally. Plus, YouTube/Google are only doing its customers a favor by making such deliberate misinformation and propaganda harder to access.

What are your thoughts of this debacle?
 
You'd think a conservative group, one who hates large government, would understand that it's not the government's place to make a ruling on how a private company deals with its users. The group is free of course to start their own website to post their content, but given how asinine their topics are, I'm guessing there's probably no one smart enough to know web development.

But looking through some of their videos, I'm going to guess they haven't a clue what the Constitution says nor what traditional conservative values even are. They just sound like a bunch of incel neckbeards who tip their fedoras while saying M'Trump while posting edgy things on 8Chan.

I do have to wonder though. When will any of these groups understand what the First Amendment actually is? Nowhere does it state that a private company can't censor you, it just states that the government can't.
 
They don't even cite sources when they spit their drivel, it's propaganda alright, I'm surprised there is over 2 million people stupid enough to subscribe to it.
Like I said, it's a rabbit hole sadly. They lure in the uninformed/politically neutral folks (usually young people) with their pseudo-academic, intellectually dishonest propaganda. They are more powerful than we'd ever realize.
 
Like I said, it's a rabbit hole sadly. They lure in the uninformed/politically neutral folks (usually young people) with their pseudo-academic, intellectually dishonest propaganda. They are more powerful than we'd ever realize.

And so the solution is for someone else to dictate what can or can't be said, and how? Is this different in some way to what you're complaining about? You're both trying to control the information available to people.

Personally, I'd rather see a greater emphasis on personal responsibility for your information intake. Just like you don't stuff anything that you're told is food into your mouth, the same should apply to information. Learn to think critically and not blindly accept whatever you see, especially on something like Youtube where the barrier to publishing is basically non-existent.

As far as Youtube and Google, they can do whatever they like. Unless the government decides to step in and nationalise major monopolies like Youtube, it's still a private company and they're welcome to kick as many people off their platform as they like, and they don't have to give any reason at all. In fact, as far as I'm aware their best course is to give no reason at all as there are reasons for discrimination that are restricted and could potentially land them in hot water.
 
In fact, as far as I'm aware their best course is to give no reason at all as there are reasons for discrimination that are restricted and could potentially land them in hot water.
I wonder if that's why they removed the Banned User Log here?
 
I wonder if that's why they removed the Banned User Log here?

Maybe, but I doubt it.

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/what-happened-to-the-banned-user-log.378804/

It was something that was quirky and amusing when the site was smaller, but I could see it becoming both a hassle to maintain and an undesirable source of perceived harassment as the site grew larger. Having it public also limits what information you can put in there as a moderator, which might be less than ideal.
 
If I'm reading this article correctly, the PragerU lawsuit has been thrown out by a lower court judge as being forced to prioritise this drivel would impinge upon Google's First Amendment rights.

https://www.wired.com/story/no-ones-happy-youtubes-content-moderation/

From the article:

For PragerU, the lawsuit is also an opportunity to rally its fan base. A Facebook fund-raiserfor the court battle has been liked nearly 3.5 million times and has raised more than $100,000. Instagram posts spelling out “We’re taking Google/YouTube to court” and “Help us tell big tech to stop censoring PragerU” have more than 15,000 likes.

I think we can see the real reason for the lawsuit. It's publicity that they're essentially getting paid for, and it bolsters the expectations of their fans. A win would be nice for them I'm sure, but hardly necessary. Whether they win or lose, they get a positive result.

The same applies to the LGBT groups referenced in the article. I doubt either groups are so dumb as to actually expect the government to force a private company to publish another private citizen's speech, and it's almost impossible that their lawyers could be. But if everyone's getting something they want (be that publicity or money), then it goes ahead regardless.
 
I think it shouldn't be legal to pretend to be a University on YouTube. It's not outside of YouTube (AFAIK) so it shouldn't be on YouTube either. By prefending to be some kind of educational, unbiased source of information they're deliberately misleading the public who don't know who they are.

I've always found that small detail very desingenuous and, for a channel that pretends to know so much about morality, what's wrong and what's right, it surely makes my skin crawl.
 
I think it shouldn't be legal to pretend to be a University on YouTube. It's not outside of YouTube (AFAIK) so it shouldn't be on YouTube either. By prefending to be some kind of educational, unbiased source of information they're deliberately misleading the public who don't know who they are.

It's pretty legal outside of Youtube, in the US at least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unaccredited_institutions_of_higher_education#United_States_of_America

"Unlike in some countries, the term "college" or "university" is not legally protected in the United States on a national level; however, such terms are restricted by some states."

I mean, lest we all forget:

images


It seems common enough in other countries as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unaccredited_institutions_of_higher_education

This doesn't surprise me that much, having a piece of paper from an institution with "University" in it's name is generally not enough for most employers. They care exactly which institution you were educated at, and will probably investigate the quality and credentials of any university that they're not familiar with.

People on Youtube are clearly not that discriminating. However, I'd argue that only people who struggled to graduate Year 10 think that having "University" in your channel name on Youtube makes your videos paragons of unimpeachable truth. Normal people know that you can call your Youtube channel anything you like and take it with a grain of salt.

Kazunori Yamauchi could create Gran Turismo University tomorrow, and I think it's a fair bet that anyone whose opinion actually matters would spot that it wasn't a real, educational-type university pretty quickly.
 
Kazunori Yamauchi could create Gran Turismo University tomorrow, and I think it's a fair bet that anyone whose opinion actually matters would spot that it wasn't a real, educational-type university pretty quickly.
Does that mean that GT Academy isn't proof that Gran Turismo is a professional grade training tool for race drivers after all? :lol:
 
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PragerU is a joke lmaoo the guys have now become the ultimate meme.

If conservatives love to disavow the Alt right how come at any turns they defend them??

Fascist video was also hilarious too. Fascists by no means were leftists or right wingers because they seem to believe in the third way but fascism always tends to drift into the right wing. Mussolini may have started out as a left winger but overtime he became more of a right winger. Hitler was never a leftist or even a liberal as some American conservatives love to say the man was a full blown right winger.

Israel the most moral army please tell me which army on this planet is moral?? In history and in the present. PragerU talks about American patriotism while defending the British Empire didnt the Americans rebel and fought for their independance against that same empire.

Ww2 was not a good vs evil war as some people make it out to be it was fought for control and domination with various factors that came into play. I do agree the Axis powers had to be stopped because they were much worse than the Allies apart from the Soviets. Out of all players worst ones were Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union.

Italy was also insane because of their use of concentration camps along with chemical weapons in Ethiopia that happened before Ww2 but a lot of people tend to ignore Italy.

I think what horrifies a lot of people how Nazi Germany treated the war as a racial war if they won they would have no doubt go after more than just Jews and Slavs but various other Non germanic and non white peoples to be exterminated.
 
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I came across this channel after a friend re-Tweeted one of their Tweets about "science proving religion" or something equally as insane. It's misleading information presented in a professional looking way to try and convince people that they know what they are talking about, and it's pretty scary how easily people online are lapping this up. The moment I decided to block them was when I saw a video titled "5 things the left have ruined".
 
Prager is close friends with the celebrity amateur/"pro" race driver adam carolla. Carolla is super fan of this prager guy, always is mentioning him on podcasts. I doubt this guy will influence the gop much, too bad as hes more laid back on things like personal social issues than the national gop is. Pragers orthodox jew. To be honest the subtle bigotry thing is more pronounced in the national gop platform than any of the current activists in internet media.The gop nation wide suggested policy for the ideal republican has language like one nation under GOD and "natural law" or "natural" marriage along with crime against nature. There is no beating around the bush there pun intended. For sure texas oil doesn't fund him completely otherwise they Wouldn't be selling hats and coffee mugs for $20..
As far as truth, like most political propoganda some of it is always obviously true for asthetics, some is a white lie.
 
Out of curiosity, which parts do you consider untruthful?
Did you watch the video?

He comes off as if it's easy for an African American to become prosperous and powerful after slavery, as if they could just magically go from poor to middle class just by working hard. That proved to be true for a very small handful of African Americans, as systematic racism, lack of basic rights, and underpaid sharecropping jobs (basically the same work as slavery but with meager pay), stymied this progression. Also, he seems to imply that black people don't need/shouldn't want reparations (with logically fallacious reasoning, unsurprisingly), when in actuality, pretty much every poor black-majority neighborhood/town in the country could use reparations. By reparations I don't mean tracking down which black people were ancestors of slaves and giving them paychecks from time to time, but re-investing into the schools, infrastructure, landscape, and community programmes, arts programs, mental health outreach, as well as opening up more economic opportunities, as these neighborhoods suffer from the worst public schools in the country, crumbling infrastructure, high unemployment, drug use, and underfunded arts programmes. A good start at giving reparations to a poor black neighborhood would be increasing the public school budgets, opening a tuition-free community college, fixing all of the street lights and poorly paved roads, and tearing down abandoned homes/buildings. Like I said, not simply writing people checks.
 
Did you watch the video?

Yes, as an opinion piece it didn't seem too outlandish. And yes there is a political slant.

He comes off as if it's easy for an African American to become prosperous and powerful after slavery, as if they could just magically go from poor to middle class just by working hard. That proved to be true for a very small handful of African Americans, as systematic racism, lack of basic rights, and underpaid sharecropping jobs (basically the same work as slavery but with meager pay), stymied this progression.

I didn't get that from the video. He mentioned the story of his great grandfather, who "struggled past overwhelming obstacles", like many others who came to this country, to become successful.

Also, he seems to imply that black people don't need/shouldn't want reparations (with logically fallacious reasoning, unsurprisingly), when in actuality, pretty much every poor black-majority neighborhood/town in the country could use reparations. By reparations I don't mean tracking down which black people were ancestors of slaves and giving them paychecks from time to time, but re-investing into the schools, infrastructure, landscape, and community programmes, arts programs, mental health outreach, as well as opening up more economic opportunities, as these neighborhoods suffer from the worst public schools in the country, crumbling infrastructure, high unemployment, drug use, and underfunded arts programmes. A good start at giving reparations to a poor black neighborhood would be increasing the public school budgets, opening a tuition-free community college, fixing all of the street lights and poorly paved roads, and tearing down abandoned homes/buildings. Like I said, not simply writing people checks.

He says that he doesn't want reparations because he was never a slave, and the money shouldn't be forcefully taken from others. That sounds like logical reasoning to me.

What determines whether a neighborhood is poor and black? Also, this doesn't sound like an argument for reparations, but for more funding to be directed towards poor communities.
 
By reparations I don't mean tracking down which black people were ancestors of slaves and giving them paychecks from time to time, but re-investing into the schools, infrastructure, landscape, and community programmes, arts programs, mental health outreach, as well as opening up more economic opportunities, as these neighborhoods suffer from the worst public schools in the country, crumbling infrastructure, high unemployment, drug use, and underfunded arts programmes. A good start at giving reparations to a poor black neighborhood would be increasing the public school budgets, opening a tuition-free community college, fixing all of the street lights and poorly paved roads, and tearing down abandoned homes/buildings. Like I said, not simply writing people checks.

That's not what is meant by "reparations" though.

That being said, I agree with you about programs that should be put in place, however they shouldn't be racist programs as you propose it. Make it all poor communities and not just poor black communities and I could get behind it.
 
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Funny when the Atlantic Slave Trade is talked about all do the right wingers, conservatives do is deflect the talk by saying the Africans sold and engaged in slavery or the Muslims had their own slave trade which is true but those arguments is nothing more than to deflect the Europeans and their role in slavery.

Islamic World and its slavery is not even talked about because the Islamic World has never been part of Western Centric or Eurocentric history at all. I dont think white supremacists would like the idea of brown people enslaving whites because thats just what the Turks and Arabs did.

Muslims were not colour blind to their role in slavery as they took anybody.

Nearly every civilisation practiced slavery of some sort. The way they practiced slavery were all different from each other.

We can all agree that slavery is bad unfortunately it still exists in modern times in many forms.
 
Funny when the Atlantic Slave Trade is talked about all do the right wingers, conservatives do is deflect the talk by saying the Africans sold and engaged in slavery or the Muslims had their own slave trade which is true but those arguments is nothing more than to deflect the Europeans and their role in slavery.

Although you may be right about extreme alt-right types, I don't think it applies to conservatives in general. I think it's more a case of putting things in context.

One thing that's never mentioned, for example, was that far more slaves were imported into Brazil than the US, and was abolished in 1888 -- more than 20 years after it was abolished in the US.

Nearly every civilisation practiced slavery of some sort. The way they practiced slavery were all different from each other.

So why is it only in the US that reparations are being discussed and considered?

We can all agree that slavery is bad unfortunately it still exists in modern times in many forms.

Absolutely!
 
Although you may be right about extreme alt-right types, I don't think it applies to conservatives in general. I think it's more a case of putting things in context.

One thing that's never mentioned, for example, was that far more slaves were imported into Brazil than the US, and was abolished in 1888 -- more than 20 years after it was abolished in the US.



So why is it only in the US that reparations are being discussed and considered?



Absolutely!

Reparations i think its the USA but you do have people demanding something from the past. With Turkey you have Armenians demanding Turkey give back Eastern Anatolia as reparations for the Armenian genocide.

Many forms of reparations which people demand but it seems the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery seems to be the hot topic at the moment.

Slavery was in the Americas long before the USA was founded and you had various Colonial European Empires who were already engaged in the trade.

Lets not forget that Native Americans also engaged in a form of slavery before Europeans not to mention they even had African Americans as slaves.

History is not really black and white as people make it out to be. You also had various African Kingdoms and Muslim African Kingdoms like Mali or Songhai that were selling slaves. Portugal also started the Atlantic slave trade hence the legacy of Brazil of having the most slaves in the Americas but also Brazil has one of the highest black populations in the Americas.

We can go all day about reparations but who will be the first to do it?? The Portuguese, African Kingdoms, Spanish, the French and the British?
 
Since PragerU is now suing Youtube and Google for alleged discrimination, I figured it's about time to make a thread about PragerU. If you don't already know what PragerU (Prager University) is, it's a youtube channel/website that is one of the prominent and up-and-coming conservative media sources at the moment, having 2.5M YouTube subscribers and over 600k Instagram subscribers.

PragerU was founded by Dennis Prager, a far-right political commentator and owned/funded by the Wilkes family, one of the richest names in hydraulic fracking. PragerU claims to be an educational platform which has published nearly 1,000 5-minute courses which supposedly teach you "everything you need to know" about a certain topic, taught by "some of the best minds out there". They claim that their content is nonpartisan and unbiased and provokes viewers to take a new perspective and becoming more informed about the world and it's issues. Sounds great on paper, right?

Yeah, nope. PragerU is pure right-wing propaganda. At best, their content is simply biased or subjective, and at worst, it's knowingly dishonest, instead teaching false and dangerous "facts", whether it be about politics, religion, global issues, world history, and even psychology. But why is PragerU so dangerous, even more so than Fox News and Breitbart (and this is the same reason it is growing in popularity, too)? Because it presents itself in a purely factual and unbiased way, and deceives it's viewers into thinking that it's an actual educational platform. First off, it isn't; PragerU isn't a university or any other type of academic institution. Unlike other right-wing news sources, PragerU refuses to admit it's overt bias. Dennis Prager makes it clear that he is an ivy-league scholar, and those who star in his PragerU videos tend to be well-educated and also racially and ethnically diverse too. The ideas presented in PragerU videos are presented in a very Ted talk-ish way, with an advanced vocabulary and non-sensational manner. As a result, millions of viewers (mainly millenials and teens), fall down what I call the "Prager U rabbit hole". The viewers think that what's taught in PragerU "courses" is always correct (despite being deceptive right-wing propaganda), and a result, view other, more extreme types of right wing rhetoric as correct, also. Now, PragerU doesn't have any overtly racist, sexist, LGBTphobic, or Islamophobic videos, but videos about these issues do contain many "dog-whistles", which in essence is presenting a racist/sexist/LGBTphobic/Islamophobic idea but in a very casual and non-controversial way. For example, a PragerU video may blame Islam for all of the Middle East's problems by using misleading "data" and drawing false conclusions, rather than stating "Islam is bad" or something of that sort. My point is, PragerU is not overtly bigoted, but it is a gateway to the extremist right. Many of those who support PragerU are the same types of people who support InfoWars, or buy into alt-right talking points like "White Genocide" or "The Great Replacement" or those that find excuses for white supremacy or islamophobia around the globe.

To get an idea, here are some of the dangerous and flat-out misleading talking points presented in the nearly 1,000 PragerU courses. Yes, I've watched quite a handful of these, just to get an idea of how wrong PragerU actually is.
  • Fossil fuels are actually good, and we should be using more of them.
  • GMOs are good for both the environment and the consumer.
  • God is real and there is scientific data prove this, that is "little known".
  • Morality cannot exist without religion.
  • Secular countries are inherently bad and America must never be one.
  • Black people in the United states must be conservative if they want to see a better future for their race.
  • It's leftists who are actually racist, not conservatives.
  • Larger government is always bad.
  • Islam is the root cause of nearly every issue plaguing the Middle East.
  • Israel is the most moral nation on Earth.
  • Climate change is a hoax created by the "Left".
  • Men are actually treated worse than women in the United States, and this starts at a young age.
  • Britain had the right to colonize nations all over the world as it was for "the greater good".
  • Speech of the wealthy and big corporations should count more than speech of the common people.
  • Money should be in politics (this video essentially defended political corruption)
  • The Democratic Party never switched and should apologize for the KKK, the Confederacy, and other forms of racism.
  • Islam promotes violence.
  • There is no wage gap between men and women, and that men and women are totally equal.
  • It is a woman's job to do for a man.
  • The "suicide of Europe" is allowing so many Muslims to enter (essentially the Great Replacement conspiracy theory).
  • College discourages freedom of thought and instead makes it's students a leftist hive mind.
  • The media lied or exaggerated what happened in Charlottesville.
  • Black people in political or corporate power actually do worse for black people as a race.
  • People are increasingly taught to "hate Jews", and anti-semitism is growing in the name of pro-Palestine.
  • Big corporations actually do act in the interest of the people, definitely not putting profits first.
  • The alt-right really isn't a big deal.
Here are some of their worst/ most controversial videos:











https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T_P14JjMcM

So yeah, PragerU is suing Google and YouTube for alleged discrimination. They allege that Youtube has restricted and demonetized over 50 of it's courses, because YouTube is supposedly anti-conservative, ant-Israel, and inherently anti-truth. They also claim that Google restricts and hides PragerU content in searches, another deliberate "attack" on their values.

My thoughts are simple: PragerU doesn't stand a chance. YouTube and Google, for whatever reason why they are censoring PragerU, are doing the right thing. Being that they are privately owned companies, they have the right do this legally. Plus, YouTube/Google are only doing its customers a favor by making such deliberate misinformation and propaganda harder to access.

What are your thoughts of this debacle?


Debunking science like ancient astronauts and Flat-earth style. Its entertaining when you view it with a rational mind. Like a parody. But I do realise there are people what are either ignorant, easy to influence, unintelligent or perhaps indoctrinated that actually do believe this stuff. At least there should be disclaimers their views do not have any scientific proof.
 
I think it shouldn't be legal to pretend to be a University on YouTube. It's not outside of YouTube (AFAIK) so it shouldn't be on YouTube either. By prefending to be some kind of educational, unbiased source of information they're deliberately misleading the public who don't know who they are.

I've always found that small detail very desingenuous and, for a channel that pretends to know so much about morality, what's wrong and what's right, it surely makes my skin crawl.

Your ship is coming in. Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Facebook and Google, replacing them with government regulated statutory monopolies. This is primarily motivated by 'concern' over what Facebook and Google allowed to happen in 2016.
 
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