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Opinion: How We Can Defeat the Silicon Valley Socialist Media Dictatorship

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America’s dystopia today is the Oppression of the Silicon Valley Socialist Media Dictatorship — Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter. You may post a paean to your guns and your religion on what you think is your private Facebook page, or tweet the latest startling fact about Donald Trump’s economic boom, which the Socialist Media Dictatorship said could never happen again after Obama’s New Normal, or a quote from a Princeton or MIT Physics Professor doubting global warming — and it’s down the Memory Hole for you, another misanthropic deplorable banished from what used to be Western Civilization.

That means your tweets do not get tweeted, or your Facebook posts on your own Facebook page get taken down, or cannot be shared with your friends, or you get sued by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission again after you won the last case at the United States Supreme Court.

But in the civil war with the Silicon Valley Socialist Media Dictatorship, you already have a remedy enacted into law, if you only have the courage to use it — the antitrust laws passed in the 1890s. If Twitter shadow bans your tweets or Facebook denies you service at their lunch counter to share your deplorable posts with your friends, or Google’s algorithms declare you a non-person like one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence, you have standing to sue, under the Sherman Antitrust Act or the Clayton Act.

Conservatives shy away from that because “antitrust” sounds like government regulation and they don’t want to be suing for a government breakup of successful companies. And besides, even the Silicon Valley Socialist Dictatorship is protected by the First Amendment. But that is all just unilateral disarmament, in the face of oppression by the Silicon Valley Socialist Media Dictatorship.

You don’t have to ask for a violation of the First Amendment as your remedy, or a government breakup of a Silicon Valley behemoth. What you can ask for as your remedy is a nationwide injunction enforcing the First Amendment, by banning Facebook, Google, and Twitter from engaging in viewpoint discrimination.

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You may think that Google, Facebook and Twitter are private companies, and so cannot violate the First Amendment. But that is just more unilateral disarmament. Under the long history of antitrust precedents, all you must show in court is that Google, Facebook and Twitter have undue “market power” for them to be liable for violating the antitrust laws. And once you show an antitrust violation, you can ask a court for a nationwide injunction banning the Silicon Valley Socialist Media Dictatorship from engaging in viewpoint discrimination. This does not violate the First Amendment, but rather enforces it, as viewpoint discrimination is a classic violation of the First Amendment.

Admit it. What grates on you about these Silicon Valley abuses is precisely that they do have so much “market power,” which is a classic antitrust violation. So team up with some conservative legal foundation and sue. Even the big time, fancy pants lawyers the Silicon Valley behemoths can throw back at you can’t beat this giant killer elixir.

What will help your antitrust case is the long history the Silicon Valley Socialist Media Dictatorship has in using the government to destroy their competition. Google has spent the last 20 years pushing for Net Neutrality, a scheme to use the government to force ISPs to give mega bandwidth hogs like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix unlimited internet service for free.

Then there was Google collaborating with former President Obama to create what became “the Google administration.” Google was at the Obama White House every week after Obama took the oath of office. Obama used Google like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump used the Heritage Foundation, swapping high-level employees to staff their administration.

Do you think people should sue social media companies for violating antitrust laws?

That is why the Obama administration greased Google’s Net Neutrality through Obama’s FCC. The two Republicans on the commission weren’t given an advance draft of the order, while Google was. And then, Obama’s FCC Chairman altered the order as Google requested before it was whooped through.

The Obama administration also approved Google’s self-driving car patent, then the software failed and the self-driving car drove itself into a bus. Obama’s Patent and Technology Office was headed by Michelle Lee, formerly a Deputy General Counsel for Patents at Google from 2003 to 2012.

Due to the infiltration into the Obama administration by the Silicon Valley Socialist Media Dictatorship, Obama became the regulation president, adopting costly regulatory burdens that the big boys, like the Silicon Valley Media Dictatorship, could weather, while small startups could not. That is why under Obama more companies were going out of business than new ones were being created.

The banking industry, for example, saw a 700 percent increase in major rules from 2000 to 2014, which led to a sharp increase in industry concentration, as the smaller banks were driven out by regulatory costs.

Another example of this regulatory collusion with the Silicon Valley Socialist Media Dictatorship is the Music Modernization Act, now pending before Congress. Supposedly created to ensure songwriters get paid by digital streaming services and other 21st century music forces, that Act will, if passed, allow a Mechanical Licensing Collective and a “Digital Licensing Coordinator” to streamline the process.

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While this might not sound controversial on its face, there is a catch: The Act would direct the U.S. Copyright Office to select whoever is endorsed by those possessing the highest market share in the music licensing and licensee industries to run the new music collective. Naturally, that would favor the biggest companies, like Google, Amazon and Facebook, in the Silicon Valley Socialist Media Dictatorship, over smaller startups in the music business and individual songwriters.

Conservative stalwart Senator Ted Cruz is fighting this crony favoritism for the Big Silicon Valley monopolists with an amendment that would empower the smaller companies to offer and administer blanket licenses in competition with the proposed Collective in the Act, but will the rest of the Senate follow his lead?

Conservatives can argue amongst themselves whether antitrust action against the Silicon Valley is warranted; however, members of both parties can and should agree that the law of the land should not be written in a way that gives them a leg up over their competitors. Doing so not only creates artificially high market share that negatively impacts pricing, competition, and innovation, but this concentration of power also negatively affects free speech and consumer safety. The Republican-controlled Congress must act to remove such legislative giveaways now while they still can.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.

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Peter Ferrara teaches economics at King’s College in New York, and serves as a Senior Fellow at the Heartland Institute and at the National Taxpayer Limitation Foundation. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush.




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