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Rupert Murdoch renewed his attacks on Google and Facebook at an annual meeting of News Corp’s shareholders on Wednesday, accusing tech giants of trying to silence conservative voices and calling for “significant reform”.
Silicon Valley companies are a favorite target for 90-year-old Murdoch, who has been criticized for years by Google for taking publishers ’news for free and for Facebook not rewarding publishers properly.
The public scourge continued, although News Corp won the concessions of the two companies, which earlier this year agreed to pay for the content of the Australian publisher.
“Our company has been leading the global debate on Big Digital for many years,” Murdoch said. “What we’ve seen in recent weeks on Facebook and Google practices certainly reinforces the need for significant reform.”
Murdoch accused Facebook employees of trying to silence conservative voices, and noted a “similar selectivity pattern” in Google’s search results. But according to data from Facebook-owned analytics company CrowdTangle, messages from conservative characters like Dan Bongino and Ben Shapiro are among the most common on the platform.
He also cited a lawsuit filed by the state’s top 10 prosecutors last year alleging that Google monopolized the digital ad market and allegedly worked with Facebook to manipulate online auctions that sellers buy and sell ad space.
“Let’s be very clear about the consequences of this manipulation of the digital advertising market,” Murdoch said. “Of course, publishers have suffered material damage, but companies have also been overcharged for advertising, so consumers have paid too much for their products.”
Representatives from Alphabet Inc. and Facebook from Meta Platforms Inc. were unable to immediately comment.
Murdoch called for algorithmic transparency – as a result of the echo of the congressional debate over Frances Haugen’s Facebook reporter on notifications about social networking business practices.
“The idea that the algorithm is falsely promoted by a platform that claims that algorithms are somehow objective and purely scientific is complete nonsense,” Murdoch said. “Algorithms are subjective and can be manipulated by people to kill competition, to the detriment of other people, publishers and businesses.”
Murdoch also asked former U.S. President Trump to publish a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal on October 27 repeating the false claim that the 2021 presidential election had been rigged to go beyond the past to serve American conservatives.
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