Companies, particularly those in the financial and retail sector, are the sinews of capitalism. Corporations lining up to form an ideological test for usership is a counterintuitive way to run a free market. //
We’re talking about digital-era monopolies that, in their market power and influence, rival the Gilded Age trusts and cartels that once exercised exclusive control over vast swaths of American industry. Instead of dithering over whether to tweak Section 230, we need to ask ourselves whether Amazon should be allowed to own AWS?
Should Facebook be allowed to own Instagram and WhatsApp and scores of other digital companies? Should Google be allowed to own YouTube and Android and DoubleClick? At what point do we say that these companies simply have too much power and that they represent combinations and trusts that must, like their 19th-century forebears, be broken up? //
As Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a member of the Senate’s Antitrust Subcommittee and a brilliant attorney, tweeted recently, “the consumer welfare standard is . . . not a narrow concern with prices. As Judge Bork wrote, it encompasses ‘innovation, choice among differing products’ and quality.” Markets, he noted, must “work for consumers, not just monopolists.” //
It’s time to de-prioritize and end the billions in state, local, and federal subsidies fed to Big Tech companies. Both Google and Amazon enjoy substantial federal contracts with the government – AWS provides cloud computing for the CIA, for example. Those should be leveraged for better behavior.
Section 230, Big Tech’s congressionally granted legal immunity, should be reformed so tech companies are incentivized to address the exploitative and harassing content that proliferates on their platforms, and more accommodating of diverse political speech. Or, absent that, repeal it altogether. //
Our speech and communications in the public square have been fundamentally altered by the digital era, so perhaps a common carrier statutory framework should apply.
In short, stop privileging the companies who threaten pluralism and a free society, and restore the proper hierarchy of America, where the people rule — not the mob, not the corporate barons, not the bureaucrats, and not the tech titans.
