[The Firewall Members-Only Weekend Preview has ended, and the video is now public on YouTube. Feel free to share it .]
Bill Whittle finds three reasons to break up Google, YouTube, Facebook and other social media companies that use algorithms to suppress free speech. This is not merely the revenge of the Right over demonetization. Bias without consent, practical monopoly status, and the distinction between carriers and publishers all lead to the conclusion that even conservatives should cheer the dissolution of these “private” businesses.
27 replies on “Revenge of the Right: Why Break Up YouTube, Google and Facebook”
One of my ‘progressive’ Facebook adversaries takes great exception that it has been “proven beyond question” that Google and Facebook have algorithms that suppress conservative thought. Can anyone provide any evidence for this claim? I guess holding these truths to be self-evident only works for those of us who have experienced it.
Yes They are censoring, at this link is a screenshot of this very video being censored by either google or facebook. But it’s not clear. Maybe Bill is censoring or boycotting these sites by not allowing me to share this on their platforms? Maybe? https://www.dropbox.com/s/oai2250nk2gmnt5/Annotation%202020-07-01%20223434.jpg?dl=0
I think you are missing the political power play here. I have never heard any stories of “sweatshop conditions” anywhere that were not initiated by unions trying to get their noses into the businesses in question. Have you?
So ask yourself, why would a union be interested in getting its hands on the employees whose job it is to censor online speech? Do you think they are ignorant of the massive power that would bring to them? Do you think they are not so corrupt as to want such power? Think about it.
Though I agree that the Tech Giants, Facebook, Google, You Tube and Twiter have turned into what the banner headline reads at FrontPageMag.com, “INSIDE EVERY PROGRESSIVE IS A TOTALITARIAN SCREAMING TO GET OUT.” Insert BIG government and the result is that nearly everything they touch turns in S***. The FREE MARKET works and especially when Competition is inserted. The entrepreneurs needs to be unleased.
We should make a southern, conservative version of YouTube. Call it “Y’all Tube.”
Shut up and take my money
Strip them over their Section 230 protection!
Again, I would prefer they stay a viewpoint neutral public platform but if they are not going to do that then, yes, without question, they should be stripped of their sectuon 230 protection.
Of course, I also like Bill’s idea of taking them to court over deceptive business practices. I think anyone hurt by restricted reach or demonetization would win big.
I’ve written to Ted Cruz about this. He is one of the very few people in Washington that I have seen address this at all. Personally I would like to see them be a truly viewpoint neutral carrier. That would be a public good that everyone would benefit from.
Of course, they aren’t going to do that if they aren’t forced to do it by the threat of legal action because (as Fluffy Goat pointed out) the left doesn’t want to allow opposing viewpoints to be able to be expressed. In fact, it is a tenant of the progressive religion that they are morally obligated to suppress voices that are “hateful”. In their eyes, if they are not actively working to suppress those voices, then they are complicit in whatever supposed harm is caused by those voices.
This cultural marxist/social justice religion is the primary driver of the current scorched earth approach to the culture war. That is why it has not stopped at the level of social media. That is why it will not stop at the level of payment processors, banks or employers. We either win people at the level of the fundamental values of western civilization, on the bedrock of historic orthodox Christianity or we will continue to lose ground until there is no ground to stand on.
Very well said. (BTW religions have tenets, not tenants. I offer this correction with love because I can tell that you care about words and phrasing.)
You are so right that we have to get back to bedrock first principles. There’s not much point in wasting resources on anything else. I don’t think it’s possible for these companies to become truly viewpoint neutral;: it seems to me that under threat of being classified as publishers, they will simply continue to do what they are now doing more or less openly, only they’ll do it secretly and deny that they are doing it. I don’t know what the ultimate answer is, but we have to at least start with Congress threatening to reclassify them as publishers. We might even be able to get some wild-eyed leftists to agree.
p.s. do you read First Things?
I’m not familiar with First Things but just a cursory glance at some of the headlines makes me think I would enjoy their content. Thank you for the link!
And thank you for the correction on the appropriate tenet/tenant. I should have googled it before trusting auto-correct. Ha!
As for being viewpoint neutral, I believe that, in the beginning, they were for all intents and purposes viewpoint neutral in the way they handled user content. However, I don’t believe that they were ever behavior neutral. They have always tried to manipulate behavior to produce more engagement with their respective platforms. And they have been very successful at those ends.
I think that once it was clear to them just how much power they possessed to effectively guide people’s behavior, it was only a matter of time before they attempted to use that power to help their “side” and suppress the other.
Checks and balances will always be needed this side of eternity to prevent the accumulation of too much power in the hands of too few.
I sent a link to this Firewall to both Senator Paul and Senator Cruz. I know that Ted and Bill have met, so maybe the staff shows it to them.
I would have sent to my Senators, but I live in VA and that would be a waste of bits and bytes.
Bill, please review my comment on the latest TSL. Perhaps you already did, because you seem to have taken at least some of what I said into account (or your thought your way through it and saw the flaws of the analogy yourself).
The analogy to genericized trademarks only goes so far. No one ever argued that Kleenex or Band-Aid should be broken up, and (unlike Aspirin), they maintain their trademarks, which means that they can still prevent anyone else from using their trademarks in those others’ labels and advertising, and can still prevent publishers from using the term generically.
The analogy to a public utility monopoly or AT&T is better, but still imperfect.
I think Bill didn’t mean to compare Google to Kleenex in a matter of what was wrong with them but more as a measure of their power and dominance in the marketplace.
I don’t think Google has the same kind of power that Facebook does, as anyone can use any search engine at any time but their ties into other content and preference scraping means their advertising revenue is larger and that props up everything else.
Facebook could be dealt with, not via a messy breakup (though undoing many of their purchases would be a good thing) but if they were just required to provide a way to interoperate (in programming an API) so that other social media networks could let their users see what Facebook users publish for friends or public. An e-mail type whitelist/blacklist where JohnQPublic@Facebook is friends with JaneRDoe@instagram (after the purchase is undone) or they are both friends with SuzyJackSmith@GAB.ai and each can see what each other has posted. This would remove the network effect of having all of your friends present on the same social media platform, which is what prevents most people from leaving and market effects from working.
If I have a rewards card at one gas station, I can still fill up at another, and I could have 3 or 4 reward cards if I really wanted. Even in areas, like Scott Ott mentioned his own area, you can have multiple power companies providing electrical power into the grid and then have people paying which ever they wish to take power out. Unless there is a multitude of power lines, the lines, like the internet, is all shared and no one has a monopoly but each is working in an interoperable way.
That is a very interesting idea, and just might cut the gordian knot. I will think about it.
Initially, on the TSL, I do think that Bill was comparing them directly. Here in the Firewall, he’s refined it to comparing their marketplace power, as you say. I was concerned that he was mixing up trademark and antitrust law, which are unrelated with the sole exception that, as you say, really powerful brands dominate the marketplace.
I agree that anyone can use other search engines besides Google, and I use Duck Duck Go when I can, but frankly Google is just better. It depends on what I’m searching for, whether it’s historical research or shopping or maps or whatnot, but usually I end up going from DDG to re-do my search at Google to get better results. Their integration with books, images, shopping, and maps is significantly superior to any other search engine I’ve tried. (I don’t use them for news because I simply go directly to sites like Drudge, Fox, and Daily Wire.) I’m willing to try other search engines if you have any suggestions.
Duck is what I use as well, though I’ve heard some people use Bing for news… I think Steve mentioned that. I haven’t gotten into it as much, but Firefox has a newer feature called Containers which should let you separate various tracking type sites and opening Google search just in a container for it might cut down on any tracking. On the other hand, they seem to store stuff on their end by IP Address so there might not be a way to avoid the eye in the sky.
Right, there are browser options to cut down on tracking, but they’re generally too complicated to bother with, even for those of us who have a moderate understanding of how things work. So Google wins, and tracks me.
While debating, it is getting harder and harder to find sources to reinforce my position on Google. I have to go deep, at least 3 or 4 pages, before I see an entry that is not left wing, or written by a known progressive source.
It’s gotten bad, and the people on the left refuse to see it.
As great as this instance of Firewall is (& it is indeed great!), I only give it an 8 out of 10.
What would have made it a 10/10 for me is if it would’a also included a clear call to action.
Please advise!
I think the “call to action” is, as always; follow your conscience, and buyer beware. Any thing else assigns someone else to do your thinking for you.
But Bill, the problem goes higher than Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. We’ve already seen Stripe, PayPal and Patreon deny service to politically incorrect creators. And we’ve seen where the problem goes up to MasterCard who pressured the payment processors to deny service.
This is a civilizational level problem of a culture moving away from the Enlightenment as fast as possible in a world that has become dependent on its principles to function. All because people hostile to the current system have spent the last 70yrs recruiting people too ignorant to know any better. People who honestly believe food comes from the store and electricity comes from the wall.
Very persuasive! Well done! I look forward to sharing this one after the preview weekend. I love that Stratoloungers got to see in real time, how you put together a Firewall. Please fix the website so that you can take more input from members on the Stratosphere Lounge.
There’s nothing broken on the website that prevents TSL questions from being posted here. I have added that to my calendar and will create a TSL questions blog post now each week on Wednesday.
Yeah, it was definitely a different sort of Stratosphere Lounge. As I was watching it, I was disappointed, because Bill wasn’t telling us what he thinks, kind of stream of thought as he usually does. However, what he did was show us how he thinks, his thought process. That was illuminating…
stream of consciousness… (how do you edit your own comments?)
Bill…I like you!
Your points are very valid. All who use social media must be careful, I don’t facebook, nor instagram, there are other search engines, besides google. As always, let the buyer(user) beware…”Believe half of what you see, and nothing of what you hear”…Edgar Allen Poe (believe or not).