BIDEN BIG TECH CENSORSHIP THREAD:

Big Tech colluding to destroy Parler in 2021 was a pivotal moment for the tech debate. Yesterday’s revelations in @theintercept about Big Government colluding with Big Tech to destroy free speech is another.

We learned from this reporting that Biden officials collaborated with Big Tech corporate officials, including the-recently-fired-from-Twitter Vijaya Gadde, to devise and implement a comprehensive censorship regime.

A monopoly on information in a democracy is a monopoly on power, and a monopoly on information for the ruling party means one-party control.

Parler showed that the current market conditions of collusive monopolies are no solution to Big Tech. The Intercept’s reporting means that the union between these companies and the government is basically complete.

We have the right to change government policy as elected officials, particularly when it’s hurting a core right, we enjoy as citizens of the American Republic.

By the way, don’t listen to bull from fake conservative tech shills about how shocked they are—we had a pretty good idea this was happening before, just not at this scale, with this proof.

And, as they pivot to yet another fraudulent argument--“don’t give the government more power to leverage the tech giants,” --please remember that Big Tech actors were EAGER to collaborate with the government. No “leverage” necessary.

There’s going to be a lot of sound and fury from Republicans, but action is what’s necessary. Not mean letters, or nasty hearings. You need to be able to produce a legislative coalition that can get something signed into law that will stop them from doing this stuff.

Fortunately, we have the solution and the coalition to stop this behavior—antitrust. The House just passed three bills on a bipartisan margin three weeks ago, and we’ve got the votes in the Senate to advance.

Antitrust fixes the problem by creating a business incentive for people NOT to censor. Just like Fox competes with the New York Times or CNN.

A further example: when there’s a story that the government doesn’t want published because of national security, media companies have a business incentive to break the news. There’s a tension between the government’s (sometimes) well-founded interest and market competition.

That doesn’t exist with today’s tech monopolists. Restoring competition would lead to different policies across platforms, with people gravitating towards the platform that allowed the most information while maintaining protections against abusive content.