Permitting the growth of internet monopolies is a form of government censorship
Permitting the growth of monopolies is
a form of government censorship
/ / 12:50 PM MON JAN 6, 2020
In my latest Locus column, Inaction is a Form of Action,
I discuss how the US government's unwillingness to enforce its own
anti-monopoly laws has resulted in the dominance of a handful of giant tech
companies who get to decide what kind of speech is and isn't allowed -- that
is, how the USG's complicity in the creation of monopolies allows for a kind of
government censorship that somehow does not violate the First Amendment.
We're often told that "it's
not censorship when a private actor tells you to shut up on their own private
platform" -- but when the government decides not to create any public
spaces (say, by declining to create publicly owned internet infrastructure) and
then allows a handful of private companies to dominate the privately owned
world of online communications, then those companies' decisions about who may
speak and what they may say become a form of government speech regulation --
albeit one at arm's length.
I don't
think that the solution to this is regulating the tech platforms so they have
better speech rules -- I think it's breaking them up and forcing them to allow
interoperability, so that their speech rules no longer dictate what kind of
discourse we're allowed to have.
Imagine
two different restaurants: one prohibits any discussion of any subject the
management deems “political” and the other has no such restriction. It’s easy
to see that we’d say that you have more right to freely express yourself in the
Anything Goes Bistro than in the No Politics at the Table Diner across the
street.
Now, the
house rules at the No Politics at the Table Diner have implications for free
speech, but these are softened by the fact that you can always eat at the
Anything Goes Bistro, and, of course, you can always talk politics when you’re
not at a restaurant at all: on the public sidewalk (where the First Amendment
shields you from bans on political talk), in your own home, or even in the No
Politics Diner, assuming you can text covertly under the tablecloth when the
management isn’t looking.
Depending
on your town and its dining trends, the house rules at The No Politics Diner
might matter more or less. If No Politics has the best food in town and
everywhere else has a C rating from the health department, then the No Politics
Diner’s rules matter a lot more than if No Politics is a greasy spoon that no one
eats in if they can get a table elsewhere.
What
happens if some deep-pocketed private-equity types hit on a strategy to turn
The No Politics Diner into a citywide phenomenon? They merge The No Politics
Diner with all the other restaurants in town, spending like drunken sailors.
Once that’s accomplished, the NPD cartel goes after the remaining competition:
any holdouts, and anyone who tries to open a rival is given the chance to sell
out cheap, or be driven out of business. NPD has lots of ways to do this: for
example, they’ll open a rival on the same block and sell food below cost to
drive the refuseniks out of business (they’re not above sending spies to steal
their recipes, either!). Even though some people resent NPD and want to talk
politics, there’s not enough people willing to pay a premium for their dinner
to keep the Anything Goes Bistro in business.
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