The United States of America is plagued by a new enemy- one unlike any it has experienced before: the passive news consuming voter.

That said, the problem is not obvious at first glance. The passive news consuming voter is not the problem per say, so much as the news mediums that provide news to these individuals. In modern America a vast majority of people receive their news from places such as their Twitter feed, their Facebook News Feed, and the headlines the CNN app shoves down your throat. This new generation of Americans who receive their news passively from social media and mainstream media sources has put immense power into the hands of the people controlling these passive news-type outlets. When the only news read is the news that you push out to people, suddenly you control the entire narrative.

Facebook and Twitter are particularly guilty of this issue. While the MSM is also guilty of pushing their own narrative, the major sin committed by outlets like CNN and MSNBC is in the stories they neglect to tell and the general media overreach present in these networks. The sins of Facebook and Twitter are far graver. In the case of Twitter, the company actively purges individuals of a particular political ideology from their site and refuses to be transparent on the reasons for these bans while Facebook simply doesn’t let you see the opposing narrative while literally lying to its users. This provides an illusion of non-bias on social media sites that starkly contrasts with the brutal Orwellian reality.

Let us talk first about Twitter. Twitter has for years hailed itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party.” In practice, however, they have become much more akin to a bully pulpit for The Left. The most egregious example of Twitter’s clear pandering to the liberal agenda is with their removal of right-wing provocateur and Breitbart News Senior Editor Milo Yiannopoulos. Following a storm of offensive tweets towards Hollywood Superstar Leslie Jones in regards to her Ghost Busters reboot appearance Twitter removed Milo’s verification on Twitter- effectively cutting him off from using the site as a legitimate form of social media presence. This particular ban has received lots of media attention-mostly due to the high profile nature of both Milo and Leslie Jones. There has, however, been a much more silent culling of the right-leaning thinkers on Twitter. In an interview with USA Today, Richard Spencer discussed his experience with Twitter, analogizing his ban and that of his think tank (National Policy Institute) from Twitter to Adolf Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives as well as making the claim that Twitter was practicing “corporate Stalinism.” Paul Town, Pax Dickinson, and Ricky Vaughn, all vocal advocates of the right-wing of American politics, also found themselves banned from the site without proper explanation from Twitter. A ripple traveled through the world of right-wing political commentary as Twitter sent a clear message with their actions: right-wing opinion will not be tolerated on Twitter.

It is important to point out that Twitter is a corporation. It is their prerogative to moderate their website however they like- the first amendment to the United States Constitution does not make it illegal for companies to moderate the content on their platform how they see fit. However it is just as important to note that Twitter has time and again claimed to be an unbiased platform that has over time proven to be anything but. The danger comes in the form of blatant lies that leave users without both perspectives of the greater debate in American politics. The result: the effective brainwashing of the majority of Twitter users.

Facebook’s bad practices are slightly less overtly egregious than Twitter but not by much. Instead of literally purging dissenting viewpoints from their site Facebook simply subverts them. In the first half of 2016 Facebook came under fire for having a clear bias in their “Trending” section. It became clear to some particularly astute users that the individuals in charge of moderating the Trending section were left-leaning in their ideologies. This was apparent in the Trending section which rapidly became a safe haven for left-wing political commentary and news. Once the Trending section came under fire from news sites such as Breitbart News, Facebook quickly pivoted and fired the entire Trending staff and replaced them with a system of algorithms. This change did not alter the content of the Trending section, however, as it persisted as a beacon of ‘truth’ for The Left. This time the Trending section was not only biased in favor of The Left but also started circulating literal lies, a reality best exemplified with a story featured on Trending in August of 2016 about Megyn Kelly being fired from Fox News.

Even more frightening is the way that Facebook decides what news you do and don’t see. The algorithm prioritizes posts that appear on your News Feed based on what you view and interact with (commenting, liking, etc.) As a result the site spits articles and posts at you that appeal to your personal bias and rejects dissenting opinion from your News Feed. This creates a cycle of thought oriented self-aggrandizement as your Facebook feed piles on the kind of news that tells you how smart you are for having an opinion that someone else also has.

The terrifying reality is that according to Pew Research (2016) 6-in-10 Americans get news from social media. Facebook and Twitter were the first and third most used social media sites in November of 2016, the month of the United States Presidential Election. Herein lies the horror: in the month leading up to the election of the President of the United States, the most powerful public figure in the world, 60% of Americans were getting their news from websites that actively purge one side of the debate from their news and circulate literal lies as well as promoting a lack of discussion on the issues that matter. These social media sites were targeting right-wing political thought in an act of systematic destruction while claiming to be unbiased. We are living in an America where lies are accepted as fact, debate and discussion are discouraged in the public sphere, and conservatives are the public target of the people distributing the ‘news’ to the American public.

Buckle up America. Welcome to the year 1984.