Steve Bannon calls Facebook, Twitter and Google bosses evil sociopaths

Steve Bannon.
Jonathan
Bachman/Reuters

• Former White House strategist Steve Bannon told a CNN
  journalist that the executives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter
  are “evil.”
• Bannon was responding to questions about US President
  Donald Trump’s recent tirade against what he perceives as
  Google’s left-wing bias.
• Bannon also suggested that big data should be taken
  away from private tech companies and held in a public
  trust.

Steve Bannon has amplified US President Donald Trump’s war on
tech.

Bannon told
CNN journalist Oliver Darcy in a phone call on Wednesday that
he thinks executives at Facebook, Twitter, and Google are bad for
society. 

“These people are evil. There is no doubt about that,” Bannon
said in a salvo that backs up his former White House boss. He
said the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai are
“sociopaths” and “narcissists,” before adding: “These people
ought to be controlled, they ought to be regulated.” He also said
tech firms “have to be broken up.” 

The former White House strategist was responding to questions
about
Trump locking horns with Google after the president accused
the company’s search engine of having a left-wing bias.

Bannon explained Trump’s thinking. “The president often times
sees information and thinks it ought to be in the public
dialogue,” he told Darcy, adding that he agreed with the
“direction” of Trump’s rhetoric.

A public trust for user data

Bannon also floated an idea to weaken the monopoly big tech
companies hold over people’s personal data, suggesting that data
be held in a public trust. He said:

“I think you take [the data] away from the companies. All that
data they have is put in a public trust. They can use it. And
people can opt in and opt out. That trust is run by an
independent board of directors. It just can’t be that [big tech
is] the sole proprietors of this data… I think this is a public
good.”

Bannon said he thinks who controls our data will become “one of
the biggest domestic issues” in the 2020 presidential election,
arguing that “this is going to bring the issue of digital consent
front and center” just as the #MeToo movement moved sexual
consent into the spotlight.

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