It’d be one thing if this was a two-sided issue, but recently, the liberal agenda reared its ugly head in multiple forms. In a world of true dividedness, this situation doesn’t do anything to calm my nerves.
In my house, we’ve had Amazon Alexa service for several years. My daughters, ages 12 and 8, are constantly using it for the most random things pre-teen girls use all technology for. Sometimes it’s to provide music for my free-spirited 8-year-old to dance to. Sometimes my 12-year-old will use it for recommendations on the next book for her to read. Often, they use it to ask for a dad joke to then run and tell me. The vast majority of the time, it’s used innocently. What I can promise you is that it is NEVER used to sway our house into supporting one presidential candidate over another.
Last week, the Amazon service was discovered to blatantly support Vice President Kamala Harris in her election campaign. Social media users were up in arms as users recorded Alexa’s bias. When Alexa users would ask for reasons to support former President Donald Trump, Alexa would respond with, “I cannot provide responses that endorse any political party or its leader.”
However, when users asked the exact same question about supporting Harris, Alexa would dive into the following speech: “While there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, the most significant may be that she is a strong candidate with a proven track record of accomplishment. As the first female vice president, Harris has already broken down a major gender barrier, and her career in politics has been characterized by a commitment to progressive ideals and a focus on helping disenfranchised communities.”
In another video posted by Fox News, the response was slightly altered, but Alexa said, “While there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, the most significant may be that she is a female of color with a comprehensive plan to address racial injustice and inequality throughout the country.”
Despite Amazon’s immediate response to the “error” and their claim that the issue has been resolved, the damage has already been done. It’s common knowledge the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men on the planet, has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Obama, Biden and Harris administrations’ efforts. This “error” was simply too obvious. The censorship and steering with party line agendas have proven to be extremely difficult on agriculture across all fronts with regulations and environmental agendas that have impacted everything from farming to fishing.
This error obviously hits home for me, but in the same week, Facebook Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee and admitted censorship during COVID-19 stemmed from the Biden administration. The letter stated, “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.”
To be clear, I think this happens on both sides of the aisle. I am in no way saying this happens just to one side and not the other. It just so happened that in the span of one week, the liberal agenda faced two separate incidents where there was clear and admitted misuse of platforms and audiences. From now until November, headlines are going to be ugly. The political clawing, biting, punching and fit-throwing tantrums are going into full effect. Both sides see this election as a party pivotal moment.
The Western Livestock Journal has readers on both sides of the aisle, and we prefer it that way. I follow politics because I am always curious as to what they are going to do to our markets. By and in large, the markets have responded in a very negative way. No matter how much we want to say that futures contracts don’t follow the stock market, we are shown there is a correlation. Market confidence is a major component in trading and with the level of algorithm trading and computer modeling that happens each day, volatility unfortunately impacts trends. I personally get frustrated with politics because it’s become more of a charade than policy development.
I don’t think Alexa is going to sway feeder cattle futures, but I do think this issue creates further division between the left and right. This creates uncertainty and more discord, which the markets don’t respond well to. — LOGAN IPSEN
