Freedom of Speech, the Internet, and ‘Big Tech’ Regulation

A couple of years ago, while the Trump-Russia collusion issue was getting front-page attention, Daniel Greenfield observed that the “Democrats response to losing an election is to push for censorship of their opposition,” something I had also been zeroing in on (e.g., see here and here). Said Greenfield:

Democrats have little appetite for military conflict with anyone except Nevada ranchers. Trump has put more Russian fighters into the ground in one day of fighting than Obama did in eight years in office. When it comes to Moscow, the Democrats want to slap on some meaningless sanctions, before pushing the Reset Button once they get into the White House. It’s not Russia they want to crack down on, it’s us.

The accusations of treason and the cries of wartime emergency are pretexts for a domestic crackdown.

The election Reichstag fire manufactured a crisis that had to be urgently addressed. Alarmist wartime rhetoric justified civil rights violations from eavesdropping on Trump officials to internet censorship. The “collusion” effort to impeach Trump and imprison his associates through everything from eavesdropping to the Mueller investigation has been the loudest part of the campaign. Internet censorship has been the shadow campaign. Its implications aren’t as obvious, but extend far beyond this election. [My emphasis]

I don’t know what “Russian fighters” Trump put “into the ground.” But the highlighted portion of Greenberg’s statement is the key point I focus on. “This election” referred to the then-upcoming 2018 midterm Congressional elections. And Greenfield is dead-on right. But I don’t only worry about the Democrats, who are now openly hostile to the First Amendment. 

Net Neutrality is the opening wedge of internet control, putting the government in charge of managing the flow of content on the internet via regulatory control of the internet service providers (ISPs). The next step, control of content via regulatory control over content providers, was already on the way. Once the Obama Administration slapped net neutrality regulations on ISPs, Diane Feinstein, Al Franken, and other politicians threatened Facebook, Google, et al with regulation if they don’t follow the same “net neutrality” rules that these companies supported. Tech companies pushed for net neutrality. Now Sen. Al Franken wants to turn it on them, reported the Washington Post. 

Censorship by regulatory extortion. It didn’t take long for the content providers’ faustian bargain to turn around and bite them. But it’s not just the Left. Steve Bannon called for ISPs to be turned into public utilities.   

Attacks on “Big Tech” is largely an attack on free speech. We need to remember that. I believe we’ll have a better chance at defending the rights articulated in the First Amendment under Republicans rather than Democrats, largely because Trump judge nominations are more respectful of the United States Constitution than anyone a Democratic president would put up before the Senate. But either way, it’s going to be an ongoing fight. Just recently, Republican Senator Josh Hawley introduced a bill proposing to overhaul the Federal Trade Commission and making it part of the Department of Justice “to take on Big Tech.” 

Theoretically, the FTC is an independent agency concerned with economic issues. The DOJ answers to the president, giving the president direct influence; i.e., it is much more politicized than the FTC. How is putting Big Tech under more political control good for free speech? It’s much worse. 

The line between economics and intellectual freedom has always been blurry. Given that “Big Tech” is so wrapped up in the internet and social media, that line blurs virtually into invisibility. The intersection between the economics of Big Tech and free speech makes it more imperative than ever to fight economic regulation, because economic regulation could easily be a gateway to censorship.* Under Hawley’s, the president would seem to be in the direct position to threaten free speech of opponents. Trump has already shown how this would work, when he threatened Amazon with antitrust  prosecution because of criticism of the president by Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post.

Anyway, the broader point is that Republicans can be a threat to free speech, just not as much of a threat than the Democrats. This is a reversal of the roles of a few decades ago, when the political Left was much more diligent in protecting free speech than the Right. The Republicans haven't gotten better. The Democrats have gotten much worse.

* [In this regard, Ayn Rand’s Ford Hall Forum talk Censorship: Local and Express is very helpful. In this talk about the 1973 Supreme Court “obscenity” decisions, Rand gives real-life concrete evidence for how government regulation of the “marketplace of goods” can morph into censorship in the “marketplace of ideas.”]

Related Reading:

Note to Net Neutralityists: Be Careful What You Wish For

S-L—'Net neutrality too valuable to lose now.': No, Internet Freedom too Valuable to Lose, Ever

Toward a Less-Free Internet: The FCC’s New ‘Net Neutrality’ Regulations

"Net Neutrality" Really Means Government Control of the Internet

David Harsanyi: Forget Net Neutrality, and Abolish the FCC

Net Neutrality: Toward a Stupid Internet—Raymond C. Niles for The Objective Standard