Big-Tech is much more powerful than its defenders assume.

Proposed bipartisan legislation to modernize U.S. antitrust law and enforcement standards for the 21st century digital marketplace calls for a fact-driven comparison of Big-Tech’s unchecked power relative to Big Government’s Constitutionally limited power.

Big-Tech has proven its monopoly and cartel power can be more powerful than Big Government.

Big Government’s Constitutional limits denied two impeachment attempts to remove President Trump from office and to prevent his ability to run again. In mid-January, Big Tech collusively cancelled President Trump, his eighty million online followers, and his right-of-center, competitive social media alternatives – with impunity.

When unchecked by antitrust law, Big-Tech monopoly gatekeepers together are dominant enough to determine what Americans see and say online. This means in 21st century America, there no longer is a real competitive marketplace for ideas, and no longer are public squares open to all political voices.

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/2020/10/08/cleland-discovering-googles-rule-of-scofflaw/

DAILY CALLER OPINION

Discovering Google’s Rule of Scofflaw

SCOTT CLELAND CONTRIBUTOR -- October 08, 20203:04 PM ET

Google has a discovery double standard.

Google treats the discovery of others’ information the way they don’t want discovery of their information treated, the opposite of the Golden Rule.

The evidence shows Google expects everyone else’s private or proprietary information to be publicly accessible and useful, except Google’s.

Google knows information is power.

Google and antitrust authorities also know asymmetric information advantages can create, maintain and extend market power.

This is a timely and relevant concern as the two biggest legal cases that Google has ever faced are coming to a head in public, at nearly the same time.

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.

IAM (Note:IAM is the world’s leading intellectual property business media platform.)

Google’s anticompetitive infringement of IP reduces innovation

By Scott Cleland