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On Big Tech, conservatives should stand for more than nothing.
Here’s a plan for promoting greater transparency, accountability, and user empowerment. https://www.newsweek.com/conservative-path-forward-big-tech-opinion-1520375
Here’s a plan for promoting greater transparency, accountability, and user empowerment. https://www.newsweek.com/conservative-path-forward-big-tech-opinion-1520375
For many Democrats, the path forward is clear. They want to break up Big Tech. They want a moratorium on mergers. And they want social media companies to censor even more online speech.
For many Republicans, this debate is about our path forward. Do we hold Big Tech accountable or do we sit on our hands and do nothing?
There are some on the Right who see no problems worth addressing or believe that any form of government-imposed accountability would do more harm than good. We must accept the status quo or reject the limited government, free market principles that conservatives stand for.
This is a false choice, of course. And this framing ignores the ways in which Big Tech has accumulated and now wields its power. A handful of corporations with state-like influence now shape everything from the information we consume to the places where we shop.
They’re not merely exercising market power; they’re abusing dominant positions.
They’re not simply prevailing in a free market; they’re taking advantage of a landscape skewed by the government to favor their business models over others.
Crony capitalism is not free enterprise
They’re not simply prevailing in a free market; they’re taking advantage of a landscape skewed by the government to favor their business models over others.
Crony capitalism is not free enterprise
If you are a small biz for which an online presence is table stakes in today's economy, you have no choice but to accept the terms dictated to you by Big Tech. Take Google, which manipulates search results to benefit large, established firms at the expense of smaller competitors.
Or consider how Google recently leveraged its dominant position in the online advertising market to effectively shut down the comment section of The Federalist, a conservative online publication.
When Congress conferred special benefits on Internet companies in the 1990s, it did so, as Section 230 states, "to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists."
Has it worked out that way?
Has it worked out that way?
