Posted on 08/15/2017 5:33:32 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
It’s time to treat Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter like public utilities....
Yes, they are private companies, just as many utilities are. And yes, these Internet monopolies do not have the same physical-infrastructure advantages that electric-utility monopolies have. But because of their network effects, their dominance and monopoly power are in many ways even starker. If I don’t like my utility I can put solar panels on my roof and an inverter and battery in my garage, and I can still get power. But if I can’t get access to the 2 billion people on Facebook because Facebook doesn’t like my politics, my rights of free expression are greatly curtailed.
And despite the fact that these are private companies, they may be violating free-speech law, as Internet-law professor Mark Grabowski has detailed in the Washington Examiner. In Packingham v. North Carolina last month, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down a North Carolina law barring sex offenders from accessing social-media platforms, with the Court repeatedly and strongly emphasizing that social media are now a crucial part of the public square.
As Grabowski notes, California’s state constitution protects free speech in some privately owned spaces, such as shopping malls. Arguably, that protection should now extend to social media — and all the major tech companies are headquartered in California.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
I won’t read articles from haters at National Review.
Move to China.... strong filter available.
Scratch a Liberal and find a Fascist...
Then you are losing out in this case. Yeah, their Never Trump bias against the President is disguting but in this matter, and with this author, they’re right.
Right on. Departure from free market principles should be our last resort; but here won’t be any free markets if these companies get their way. They are promoting Marxism and world governent.
Nuke Silicon Valley.
Trump is slowly realizing that almost all the CEOs and the boards that control the big US transnational corporations are controlled and administered by Democrats. This may seem counter intuitive. Most Americans traditionally associate these people and entities with free markets, capitalism and Republicans. However these corporations and individuals have learned to accommodate, survive and intertwine with big government. They now have special niches, tax breaks, and in short are part of the swamp. This is very similar to the economic model envisioned and implemented by fascist economists in Germany and Italy. It is not surprising that these corporations now seek to control speech, thought and political action. Trump if he is to be successful must move beyond any fascination with corporatalism. He must eliminate rules, regulations,lower taxes and reinvigorate creative capitalism.
Crony Capitalism + Deep Police State = Fascism.
Yet it is Trump and his voters who are the “fascists.”
Welcome to Orwell’s nightmare.
Or force breakup of the monopoly communications companies into multiple competing companies. Some of the new entities will cater to the right just to make money which is the first and only viable goal of all commercial concerns.Some will refrain from trying to control of content at all. Some will be left wing gated communities.
In my opinion, the problem is, you can’t have it both ways.
If a site like free republic is like a mall, or public square, then it can’t infringe on specific groups of people from collecting there and wanting access to it’s services. However, there are lots of people who think a provider like free republic should be liable for what people post there, who accesses, and how it’s used. Now I don’t think people have much sympathy for something like Facebook and Zuckerburg getting filthy rich, but it seems unfair to me that you can call social media and other online sites and services like a public resource and thus not permitted to govern it’s own policies and access, yet turn around and tell it that it’s responsible (negligent or even liable) for who goes there and what was done, after something bad happens.
Also, facebook is not a monopoly. It’s just big. The only thing that you can’t get if you don’t go to facebook is whatever is on facebook. They don’t hold anything that you need there besides facebook content. Everything non-facebook, you can get elsewhere.
I know that seems both obvious and convoluted, but to me it’s like saying walmart is a monopoly because you can only get walmart branded products from walmart.
You don’t NEED facebook. I don’t use it. I’m not missing anything important.
No one is holding a gun to your head and demanding that you use Facebook. Millions of people live happily without it and accomplish more with the time saved.
The Bay Area, where all these companies live is so OVERWHELMINGLY LIBERAL there is no way they can even conceive of being even handed.
It just cannot happen.
They, as a group, think anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi is literally a Nazi.
When my parents pass I am out of here.
“It’s time to treat Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter like public utilities....”
Nonsense.
Nothing is stopping you from starting a competitor to Google and Facebook.
However, you can not start generating electricity, put power lines on telephone posts around your town and begin selling electricity. Also, you can not drill a gas well in your back yard, and then go through your entire city and place gas lines in the ground and sell natural gas.
However, you can start an internet based company.
First of all, with social media it isn’t so much “free speech” but free feels, for many of these forums are so construed that they are very good at expressing people’s shallow feelings but are not so good as forums to express thoughts or knowledge.
This is especially true of things like Facebook with constraining character count limits per post.
A forum like this is a good place to encounter and converse over what people think ... though dense walls’o’text without line breaks do nobody any favors (never mind if the writing isn’t up to par).
So what to do with a domain of feels?
There is little that can be done.
Take, for instance, the subject of cultural Marxist that I’ve been bringing up a lot recently. You can be the soul of wit (brief and to the point) if your reader understands what this is; however, if they do not — especially if they ARE cultural Marxist and may have even been led to believe (as so many have) that the Frankfurt School was a nothing muffin even though it undergirds their whole frame of reference — there is no way to convey these things without a lot of work ... and even then you’ll run smack dab into the wall of the left not being willing to accept the sorts of evidences that can be presented at all.
Now as a presenter, something of YouTube may be able to convey something on such difficult topics but the comments sections are as dominated by feels as anything else.
Moreover, you can expect those in opposition who understand what is being said to weigh in to outright lie to whatever effect they may, as happens with defenders of Islam when discussing things like taqiyya, reducing the comments to tug of war between the (lying) defender of Islam and the (truth telling) “hater”.
But sometimes you just gotta be willing to beat your head against these mad buggers’ walls....
Lefties will run any government bureaucracy regulating the internet or its big monopolies.
Wrong.
Unfair Software Patents are preventing you from competing with Google & Facebook. Monopoly.
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