Congress

Big Tech’s defense against any potential governmental accountability is wielding the myth that their success is a result of their free market merit, innovation, and competitiveness.

Myth busted.

Common sense scrutiny proves the Internet and Big Tech are not the mythic result of laissez faire free market capitalism, but the real product of massive U.S. Government (USG) intervention via U.S. Internet industrial policy in Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.

Big Tech’s unchecked.

If the four CEOs of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon collectively could cancel online a sitting Republican U.S. president and his political allies with impunity in January, what checks them from collectively cancelling tens of millions of Republicans again?

What checks Big Tech from using their Section 230 impunity in the 2022 midterm elections and collectively canceling many Republican Senate and House candidates, their political allies and online followers that express broadly held Republican views that Big Tech deems objectionable?

It is in the raw political interests of the government’s incumbent party and unchecked Big Tech to collectively cancel the opposition party online to retain control of their levers of power long term.

Do any checks stand in the way of “The Collective Cancel” political precedent becoming practice?

Repeal of Section 230’s 1996 lawless Wild West Internet policy is inevitable because it is based on an immoral premise and has inflicted severe damage to America’s constitutional liberties, national security and economic prosperity.

Repeal vs. Reform

Repeal of Section 230 would serve America and Americans much better than reforms that perpetuate lawless U.S. Internet policy and guarantee Big Tech remains unaccountable and Americans remain unprotected online.

Repeal would affect a major national policy change, while reform incrementalism would preserve the online status quo.

Repeal would be a comprehensive and constitutional solution, while content moderation reforms are piecemeal solutions that carry constitutional risks.

Section 230 warrants repeal because it created, and empowers, two different types of problematic power-without-accountability to customers, competition, government or the courts.

Section 230’s extraordinary unaccountability advantages for Internet companies are an out-of-control, Big Tech monopoly-making machine.

There is no antitrust fix for Big Tech monopolization without first, or simultaneously, repealing Section 230, the evident root cause of, and superpower behind, Big Tech’s evident monopolistic impunity.

Section 230’s Wild West Internet policy and law empowers Big Tech to cancel and deplatform any competitor or dissenter, even the President of the United States, with impunity.

“The court of public opinion” is not a court of law.

“The truth” is not sufficient in a court of law like it is in the court of public opinion. In a court of law, the well-known legal “truth” standard and oath is telling “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Public relations, politicization, market capitalization, and acclamation, are not relevant antitrust arguments in a court of law. Google’s evident, self-serving, political definition of “the consumer welfare standard” has become damaging dogma politically undermining the legitimacy of antitrust law and antitrust law enforcement based on the facts and the rule of law standard of “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” [See White Paper & Evidence here.]

https://dailycaller.com/2020/10/19/cleland-the-internet-imperative-is-protect-people-by-restoring-a-duty-of-care/

DAILY CALLER

The Internet Imperative Is Protect People by Restoring A Duty-of-Care

SCOTT CLELAND CONTRIBUTOR                                                                      October 19, 2020 11:39 AM ET

How can American Internet law protect platforms from people but not protect people from platforms?

https://dailycaller.com/2020/09/29/cleland-rebalancing-the-internet-imbalance-of-a-25-year-utopian-policy-experiment/

DAILY CALLER

Rebalancing the Internet Imbalance of a 25-Year Utopian Policy Experiment

SCOTT CLELAND CONTRIBUTOR                                                        September 29, 2020 11:38 AM ET

The Internet is now less a technological revolution and more of an unravelling, 25-year-old utopian policy experiment of freedom-without-responsibility.

There is no question that the Internet’s many technological innovations have been a phenomenal success given that everyone everywhere conducts everything over the Internet.

Please don’t miss my Daily Caller Op-Ed (PDF here) on America’s Internet Reset Opportunity for a Responsible, Prosperous Internet.

It explains how America can and must do much better than a Wild West, Winner-Take-All, Internet law.

And it spotlights a bipartisan, popular Internet reset opportunity for Congress to restore a legal duty of care online to revitalize America’s civil society, competitive commerce, and productive prosperity.

Our polarized Internet world has generated at least one area of extraordinary bipartisan consensus: 77 percent of Americans agree Google, Facebook, and Amazon have too much power according to a Gallup survey.  

The near unanimous participation of Federal, State and Congressional antitrust authorities in probing  Google, Facebook, and Amazon, indicates extraordinary concern that their unchecked market power threatens competition for the consumer market.

Both political parties agree that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which grants Internet platforms with immunity from liability for good faith moderation of online content, in practice provides Internet platforms unaccountable power that warrants reform.

Section 230’s intermediary impunity loophole provides these dominant consumer gatekeepers with anticompetitive advantages that facilitate the monopolization of access to consumer demand online, thus undermining competition for U.S. consumer spending that comprises 68% of U.S. GDP.

These gatekeepers, which do their best to avoid competing directly with each other, dominate competitive access to the online U.S. consumer market, leaving most potential competitors dependent on them to broadly reach online consumer demand.

How could this happen?

Big Tech tales that the Coronavirus Crisis somehow will mitigate their Techlash problem, totally miss the mark.

They miss that the crisis is not good and not about tech. They miss that to whom much is given, much is expected.

They miss how many other industries and companies have contributed and sacrificed during this crisis without expecting something in return.

Spontaneously this past week, a tech op-ed chorus broke out singing a new tune and tale, that the Coronavirus Crisis could benefit Big Tech and save it from much of the Techlash.

Consider: Coronavirus gives Big Tech an opportunity to shine – Axios 3-18-20; Has the coronavirus killed the Techlash? Wired 3-20-20; Big Tech has the cash to expand after crisis, Regulatory threat also likely to recede for now, FT 3-20-20; and What Techlash? Virus Could Remake Industry Giants Image, The Information 3-23-20.  

Like some catchy new tunes lyrics, these don’t make sense.

Why is the Coronavirus Crisis no cure for the Techlash?

First, Americans strong bipartisan views undergird the Techlash in the U.S.

Consider a recent Gallup poll of Americans published 3-11-20.