Traditionally, something like digital rights and privacy would be an issue that falls within the domain of the Liberal party. It deals with an emerging technology and involves consumer rights and protections, all issues that are generally owned by the Democrats.
However, as with everything we are living in strange times. And Conservatives can use that to their advantage and steal this emerging issue away from Democrats and make it a Conservative owned issue for a generation or more.
As it stands, Democrats are the ones with the dirty hands when it comes to digital rights and privacy protections. All the large social media and tech companies have overtly shown their liberal bias, so there is no doubt that the upper management of these companies are highly liberal.
Not only that, almost all of the CEO’s of these social media sites have sided with Democrats on both national and local elections, as well as donated huge sums of money to Democratic candidates. So it goes without saying and without any surprise that Democrats are in bed with the biggest enemies to digital rights and privacy for consumers. In fact, if you take politics out of the equation, most people believe that social media companies are not playing fair or ethical when it comes to the rights of the consumer and their data.
It’s this situation that can allow Conservatives to steal this issue away. And it won’t just be for short term gain. As everyone understands, our lives are only going to become more and more digitally based as we move forward. Almost everything we do, from where we drive to what we buy will be passed through some company’s servers and the data stored and compiled, and in some cases used against us. So Conservatives owning this still somewhat nascent issue will only make them stronger as the years go by.
Conservatives have already begun to make inroads on this issue, but it is somewhat inadvertently and mostly as a matter of self-preservation. With social media sites censoring Conservative voices nearly everyday, Conservatives had no choice but to take on this issue of free speech rights in the digital age dominated by social media platforms.
However, Conservatives need to take it a step further and put forth a broader policy position in regards to digital rights as a whole. One that of course includes free speech issues, but deals with privacy and how our data can be used by these giant companies.
If Conservatives can jump on this issue now while the Democrats are at a disadvantage, it can become one of the stronger and farthest reaching issues Conservatives have dominated in a long time.
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