How To Solve the Big Tech Racket | Beaufort County Now | So the Titans of Silicon Valley went to Washington as commanded to tell the Senate that they are doing a wonderful job facilitating free speech with their platforms. | beaufort observer, big tech, racket, silicon valley, senate, october 30, 2020

    So the Titans of Silicon Valley went to Washington as commanded to tell the Senate that they are doing a wonderful job facilitating free speech with their platforms. Click HERE to read about the hearing.

    After all was said and done, more was said than done... at least for now. The focus was on something called "Section 230" which gives internet companies immunity for what readers and users of internet platforms post on their sites. Of course, the Beaufort Observer likes this. And clearly it has done much to drive the growth of the internet and thus the modern economy. All one has to do to see this is study China and how there tight government control of their internet has stifled innovation and open exchange of ideas. There you disappear if you post too much of what the Communist Government does not like.

    But the problem is that Big Tech has abused this protection. They censor posting they don't like and recently they have just become an arm of the Democrat National Committee and the Biden Campaign. Just look at how they have treated the Biden Laptop Story.

    So President Trump and several Republican Senators have called for the repeal of Section 230.

    The Big Tech guys, no doubt knowing they are between a rock and a hard place, did not object but tried to obfuscate the issue by warning that care must be taken in crafting what would replace Section 230.

    Well, we have a proposal. Here it is:

    Forget about repealing Section 230 and crafting a book full of new regulations, written by lobbyists. Instead, threat this as an anti-trust issue.

    That is, define the problem as huge Levitans that have virtually total control of the market in which they operate and that very fact suppresses competition. They can control (or buy) any competitor who they perceive as a threat. It is the same situation when John D. Rockefeller built Standard Oil to the point that it controlled the gasoline market or when AT&T gained control of the telephone system. Perhaps it is more analogous to Microsoft's use of Windows to control the PC market.

    The solution then is to bust these monsters up and prevent them from stifling competition.

    And while they are after it, they should also bring Amazon/Washington Post into the mix and reign in Jeff Bezos while they are at it.

    For our conservative friends who are upset about the control of the message these moguls have exercised over free speech in this campaign we would once again suggest that they stop using Google, Facebook, Twitter — including one Donald J Trump — and even Amazon and get on the stick to provide the public with better alternatives. We would call that "The Beaufort Observer Model." We need more BO's, Beaufort County Now's, The County Compass etc. and they should be able to compete in the open market of ideas.

    More regulations of the internet are not the way to go. The way to go is to make the internet free and open to competition. It has worked before and it will work again.