BOOM!
This is exactly what is needed to rein in Big Tech.
Just as we don’t have creepy hall monitors invading privacy and opening letters, blacklisting people from using the Post Office, monitoring and intervening in phone calls to deplatform other Americans from having conversations, applying an arbitrary and politically charged litmus test to determine who can have access to electricity, water or sewer service, we don’t need these people wielding this power over the internet which is critical infrastructure and has become the 21st century public square.
MSN:
“That’s why 230 repeal is ultimately just a sideshow. The real way forward—bear with me—is making these companies look a bit more like the platforms that 230 envisioned; that is, forcing them to embrace their role as essential infrastructure.
This is the path that the United States has taken in the past when faced with privately owned goods or services that have become indispensable to public life—such as roads and railroads—and the path that has defined its approach to communications infrastructure in particular. State statutes from the mid-18th century required telegraph companies to treat all comers equally. Graham Bell got a telephone patent in the 1870s; when it expired in the 1890s, the telephone industry took off in the U.S. Then in 1910, Congress passed the Mann-Elkins Act, regulating the telephone-service providers as “common carriers” because of their central role in communication. They could still be privately owned, but they took on a public obligation not to discriminate among different users. …
In most American law, infrastructure is subject to different rules than other consumer goods. It is treated as a public utility and regulated in the public interest. Companies that maintain infrastructure are not allowed to charge different prices for different people who want access to it. Communications infrastructure is banned from spying on those who use it. The Postal Service can’t open mail, and it can’t charge one marketer $5, and another $10, to send the same poundage of bulk mail. Telephone companies can charge different rates for different kinds of calls, but they can’t charge different people different rates, or listen in on calls and use what they learn for marketing.
Applying the nondiscrimination principle to Facebook and YouTube could play out in various ways. Congress has broad authority to regulate the business model of public utilities, and it could ban targeted advertising or any form of algorithmic amplification. Another option would be to ban all advertising, targeted or not, meaning that the platforms would be funded either by non-targeted ads or a subscription service. Instead of ads, YouTube might cost $10 a month, roughly as much as Amazon Prime. Instead of picking and choosing what content is likely to appeal to users—or, put more cynically, to addict users—Facebook would serve up content in the order that it was put on the platform. The upshot of public-utility regulation is that citizens would have their choice among a handful of platforms administered by technology companies and, separately, news outlets run by (hopefully) responsible publishers. …
Break up the ad moguls, break up the publishers, reinstate the rule of law, recognize the public-utility role of big, networked social-media companies, and we have a fighting chance. In other words, follow the communications policy that defined American law until the 1970s: Regulate the infrastructure, enforce the common law of libel and defamation, and otherwise maximally disperse power.”
MSN:
“Data centers, servers and programs for building applications are the internet’s wood, nails and glue. They are the supplies needed to partake in democracy, be involved in community, engage in commerce and support a family. In short, they’re the necessary supplies for existence in the 21st century. Alas, they’re controlled by several powerful corporations bent on denying service to—in essence, exiling—half of the country. …
In the last six months alone, big tech has censored newspapers, deplatformed Parler and stopped the president of the United States from communicating with the American people and the world. These moves nakedly reveal its unchecked power and how far it’s willing to go to purge opposition. To many who wish to build a proverbial home, the tyrants of Silicon Valley are declaring that they will close off every point of access to that aspiration.
This is all antithetical to freedom and human flourishing. It’s a broadside against the ideals and principles enshrined in our nation’s founding documents. Indeed, it’s a ruthless campaign to eradicate the immutable rights delineated in the Declaration of Independence and safeguarded by the Constitution. And big tech is now not only excising our ideas from society, it’s eliminating our very ability to formulate and express them. …”
These people have blown to smithereens the political support for the sort of “pro-business” conservatism that favored deregulation which has existed since the 1970s:
In the span of a year, there has been a 26 point drop in Republican satisfaction with the “size and influence of major corporations.” This is now the minority view inside the Republican Party.
Look at Republican and Independent views of Big Tech.
After Silicon Valley rigged the 2020 election for Joe Biden, Democrats are unchanged since 2020. There has been a 51 point swing against Big Tech among Republicans and a 21 point swing among Independents. They crossed the Rubicon when they purged Trump from the internet.
“The Techlash is coming to pulverize Silicon Valley”
I doubt it. It usually gets funneled into some bullshit committee meeting where they rake the CEOs over the coals on national tv and actually do nothing about it. It’s circus theater that is supposed to look like something is being done about it without anything being done about it to the plebs.
(I do believe in centralization. I do believe also in canceling people. Canceling has always been going on. The question is what gets and what doesn’t get canceled? What ideologues are running the institutions? Liberalism just mask the hegemony of commissars or hall monitors that ideologically police society with social, financial, repercussions).
I mean, they could try to bust up the companies. But the issue is ideological. All companies (and their CEOs) adhere to the ideology of Liberalism. If they don’t, they face ramifications from other companies and the society itself.
The Hindu “Americans” have colonized Silicon for the complete benefit of the Hindu geneline….not for THE HISTORIC NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS MAJORITY GENELINE….
And this is exactly what WHAT GENOCIDE IS…….AND IT IS BEING CARRIED OUT BY HINDU LEGAL IMMIGRANTS…..
If the filthy fucking cockroach Donald Trump is elected POTUS in 2024….He will enthusiastically import the HINDU YOUTH population of India…..LEGALLY YOU FUCKING QNON TARDS….onto NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICAN LIVING AND BREEDING SPACE…..
Russians, Eastern Europeans and other communism suffered nations never imported Hindus.
What You personally prefer ? Burned at the stake as a witch by fellow Cristian catholic whites without any foreign nation nearby like in Salem or shot by white conservative Vasily Blokhin in the Katyn ?
Moron Libertarian
How did the NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICAN EVER manage to survive when there hardly any Hindus and Sikhs in America?
Answer:VERY WELL THANKYOU!!!….WE PUT 12 ALPHA NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICAN MALES with advanced engineering degrees ON THE MOON….without the Hindus voting and taunting us into a violently persecuted White Racial minority within the borders of America….
Only a racially treasonous White Libertarian who still has teenager acme on his face would make such a twisted argument to justify race-replacement…
I am not Libertarian. I am Eastern European evil Nazi.
You know, Space adventures are cool but fixing problems on Earth is also necessary. Real life experience demonstrates that everyday McCarthyism is far more important than advanced engineering degree or any other education.
When you control your own fellow white communists, then you never have a problems with other races because nobody brings them in.
Those Big Tech companies serve as data collectors for the CIA, FBI, NSA and all the other 3 letter intelligence agencies, some of which are completely unknown to the general public (like the NRO, for example). That being the case do not look to Congress or the FCC to impose any regulatory reforms on the industry.
Yes and it’s pretty obvious that people are on Social Media less and less. If it wasn’t for Messenger….even less people would be on Facebook. These big tech companies and social media platforms should be considered public utilities at this point and Free Speech should rule……aka the Constitution aka the 1st Amendment. It’s common sense…if you own one of these companies….welcome as much business aka customers as you can from all political spectrum or none at all. Let people debate online the news of the day and so on. Deo Vindice !
“Some people might argue that search and social media are optional, not infrastructure, more like video games than cable lines. But that point of view ignores reality.”
No, it doesn’t.
“They count as infrastructure because much of society depends on them for connection.”
Nothing’s stopping anyone from starting competitors.”
“Small businesses need Facebook and Google to reach customers.”
They don’t NEED them, they use them.
“Politicians need them to reach constituents.”
Ditto.
“For many people, they stand in for the sidewalks, post offices, telephone lines, and public squares, all bundled together. News organizations live and die by access to audiences through these companies.”
Nothing, to say it again, is stopping anyone from starting competitors.
PS Anyone who pays attention to anything on Facebook or Twitter or who cares about “our democracy” or who thinks he or she derives some benefit from being “reached” by a politician is brain dead.
If the state IS the people, then state-run (democratic) news media is sufficient and the best. It doesn’t matter how many more private-profit media “competitors” the U.S. allows, we still need a strong, viable peoples’ democratic news source free from olgarchic/plutocratic control. We need real democratic public news media just as much as we need democratic (versus private-profit) banking.
Good luck, censoring the internet has been a high priority of our oligarchs since 2016. They say the most terrible type of king is one who is afraid of his people. The ethnic mafia that composes the majority of our ruling elite have been afraid of the people they live amongst for a millennia now. That is one of the defining aspect of their “culture” and when you fear something you also grow to hate it. The hostile acts we’ve been experiencing for 70 years now meant to hurt us are coming from their fearful ids. What better way to hurt and weaken your enemy than turn his son queer and have him dress in women’s clothes, why let’s just trick him into thinking such a shameful vice is a virtue. Censoring the internet it meant to assuage their fear, to them Trump really was a second Hitler and we are “denazifying,” people deranged by paranoia don’t think reasonably.
If they weren’t such parasites, they wouldn’t have to live among us and be so afraid of us.