And Collusion Too….
Monday 18 January 2021 - Filed under Authoritarianism + Big Tech + Dumbassery + Government + Regulation
Glen Greenwald on BigTech and Government Collusion at his Substack:
If one were looking for evidence to demonstrate that these tech behemoths are, in fact, monopolies that engage in anti-competitive behavior in violation of antitrust laws, and will obliterate any attempt to compete with them in the marketplace, it would be difficult to imagine anything more compelling than how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor.
[…]
On Thursday, Parler was the most popular app in the United States. By Monday, three of the four Silicon Valley monopolies united to destroy it.
[…]
Not only did leading left-wing politicians not object [to the obvious collusion between these companies to destroy a rival] but some of them were the ones who pleaded with Silicon Valley to use their power this way. After the internet-policing site Sleeping Giants flagged several Parler posts that called for violence, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked: “What are @Apple and @GooglePlay doing about this?” Once Apple responded by removing Parler from its App Store — a move that House Democrats just three months earlier warned was dangerous anti-trust behavior — she praised Apple and then demanded to know: “Good to see this development from @Apple. @GooglePlay what are you going to do about apps being used to organize violence on your platform?”
The liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg pronounced herself “disturbed by just how awesome [tech giants’] power is” and added that “it’s dangerous to have a handful of callow young tech titans in charge of who has a megaphone and who does not.” She nonetheless praised these “young tech titans” for using their “dangerous” power to ban Trump and destroy Parler. In other words, liberals like Goldberg are concerned only that Silicon Valley censorship powers might one day be used against people like them, but are perfectly happy as long as it is their adversaries being deplatformed and silenced (Facebook and other platforms have for years banned marginalized people like Palestinians at Israel’s behest, but that is of no concern to U.S. liberals).
That is because the dominant strain of American liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism. Liberals now want to use the force of corporate power to silence those with different ideologies. They are eager for tech monopolies not just to ban accounts they dislike but to remove entire platforms from the internet. They want to imprison people they believe helped their party lose elections, such as Julian Assange, even if it means creating precedents to criminalize journalism.
It’s well known that under anti-trust law no company may use its market dominance to force others out of business. That maxim is extended to several companies working together to push a competitor out of business. This is a basic premise under free market principles that’s been in effect for a very long time.
What isn’t as well known is that even if companies are NOT using their market dominance to push the little guys around, they also may not act against people as a result of government threat, as found in Hammerhead Enterprises, Inc. v. Brezenoff, 551 F. Supp. 1360 (S.D.N.Y. 1982), which notes “comments of a government official can reasonably be interpreted as intimating that some form of punishment or adverse regulatory action will follow the failure to accede to the official’s request.” And it should be no mystery that the companies involved are under threat by Democrats in the form dozens of looming anti-trust lawsuits against BigTech, not to mention that various Democrat lawmakers have sent unveiled threats to BigTech: censor conservative speech, or else.
In April 2019, just as fervor over BigTech was beginning en masse from both parties, Democrats issued a shot over BigTech’s bow. and
Moreover, in Carlin Communications v. Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co. (1987), the Ninth Circuit found that it doesn’t matter whether the action taken is the direct result of a threat from government because “[s]imply by “command[ing] a particular result,” the state had so involved itself that it could not claim the conduct had actually occurred as a result of private choice.”
And that’s where we sit. BigTech, including all of the partners to the disappearing of Parler, an entire platform preferred by those who don’t want censored speech, and the banishment of the president along with tens of thousands of his followers from social media, after having received threats veiled and unveiled from democrats, colluded at just the time it became clear that not only would Biden be president, but that Democrats would also control all of Congress (and while BigTech executives and political operatives are amassing cabinet and other high ranking positions within the Biden administration in a bid to stave off anti-trust proceedings while they write the regulatory and legal framework that their industry operates under).
These actions taken at that time, in accordance with the wishes of the politicians who both threatened extensive legal punishment and who now control all of government for at least the next two years, are no fucking coincidence.
2021-01-18 » madlibertarianguy