The really ridiculous part of the growing Col Schlichter wing of the conservative block is that, forgetting about the lack of principle, effectively they are saying we should trust THE GOVERNMENT (you know...the same people,who run the Dept of Motor Vehicles) to GET IT RIGHT on Google, FB etc. Uh huh.
As I've written previously, Trump will someday not be president and someday we will have a ghastly DNC apparatchik heading the Executive branch. When that President pushes to break up FR or Fox or Diamonds and Silk on antitrust grounds, I can sleep well knowing I didn't help contribute to the right-wing antitrust witch hunt. Oh, and FB and Amazon and Google will likely be like IBM at that time...a once-feared firm that is now still big but yesterday's news.
That's exactly right. It's astonishing how many conservatives don't see the idiocy of what they're proposing here.
You are right, of course, and anti-trust is not the correct approach to this issue at all. We should look instead to finding leaders with the courage to do what Trump did to CNN during the 2016 campaign. The network will never recover any credibility, and it is their own fault for blatantly taking sides against someone with the courage to fight back.
Anti-trust actions appeal to the "play nice" wing of the GOP, who thinks a government man with a gun can play the role of a neutral arbiter so they won't have to get their hands dirty in the political arena. To me it seems that the success of social media attacks on Trump are based less on the big tech companies' unanimity of thought than on the fact that the people who are supposed to be counterattacking - his own party - are too intimidated to do their jobs. The opposing arguments need to be loudly proclaimed by Republican Senators - instead, they are the first to run for cover whenever Trump says something the least bit controversial.
Facebook and Twitter should be scared to try to hide the Republican side of the story. Consider why they are not.