WE MUST BREAK UP BIG TECH
taking place on a handful of privately owned platforms, and the scale at which this is done asserts a troubling amount of control over
In other words, these companies are not “free market” unicorns, arising without any benefit from the government itself. Rather, Big Tech and the government are already well-entangled, both between the tax subsidies the companies received and their statutory protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute has noted that “libertarians are right (and consistent) to say that private firms have the right to discriminate based on political views.” However, “these tech firms wield enormous power, are not private as many would believe and benefit from a very unique form of corporate welfare.” Not only do these firms receive generous tax breaks, but they are the recipients of a special government carveout, thanks to Section 230, which protects Big Tech companies from being sued for the content users post on their sites. The law also creates a liability shield for the platforms to “restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be... objectional, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.” In other words, Big Tech is a First Amendment actor like the rest of us – but a privileged one. It is not subject to the same liability as, say, movie theaters, newspapers, or this magazine. This is, in part, by design... The platforms would be overwhelmed by lawsuits without such legal protection, which was part of the genesis of its creation – to protect a nascent Internet and allow it to develop. (Libertarians
what free people know and believe. It is censorship in the classical sense,
outsourced to private companies. It is one thing for a private entity to exercise its choices against the content it wants to host. It is another for private business to do it as a monopoly or a cartel, where users cannot avoid either the service or the ramifications of its choices in changing the society in which they live. The fact of the latter means that the people who care about government censorship should be equally concerned about this type of thought control when exercised by private power at a massive scale. A FREE MARKET FORWHOM? BIG TECH VERSUS THE REST OF US Acknowledging that the monopoly power of these companies gives them censorship control does not logically lead to a conclusion that the government should act. That requires a separate argument. And there are many thoughtful arguments as to why proposed government action against Big Tech – be it antitrust enforcement or reform of their statutory protections – should be carefully considered for the trade-offs involved. But such arguments tend to characterize any effort to engage Big Tech from a lawmaking standpoint as “government overreach” – intentionally avoiding the practical reality that the government is already heavily involved with these platforms.
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January 2021
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