Edited by: TJVNews.com
As the subject of challenging Big Tech for their heavy handed censorship of voices they deem “dangerous” has once again dominated the news cycle, it is noteworthy to examine the nuances of the cognitive war of thoughts and ideas that is plaguing our society.
Former President Trump has announced that he will be launching a class action suit against Facebook, Google and Twitter for deleting his accounts and thusly silencing him. This, of course, begs the question of who precisely is protected by the First Amendment as it pertains to free speech and the verbal and written expression of ideas.
Is any sort of censorship ever permitted and if so, when, where and how?
According to a recent report in the New Yorker magazine by Sheelah Kolhatkar, the government’s initiative to break up Facebook over alleged antitrust violations hit a major snag on June 28th, when federal judge James E. Boasberg accused the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general representing 48 states of a number of errors and generally sloppy work when they filed the antitrust cases against Facebook. A spotlight, of sorts, was focused on the FTC for not providing a clear description of the “market that Facebook operates in” and as for the attorneys general collaborative efforts, they were chided by the judge for having “waited too long to act.”
Since practically everything that swirls around us there days has become heavily politicized, the case against Facebook has bipartisan support with both sides of the proverbial aisle crying “foul” over the ever increasing domination of the big tech titans in multiple facets of our lives. Seeking to severely curtail what thwey perceive to be the ominous influence of the social media “monsters” which would also include Google, Amazon & Apple, the government has rallied the troops from both the left and the right in this war on these major technology companies.
As the New Yorker report keenly points out, the social media tech giants “control large portions of the media, advertising, retail, social-networking, and communication markets.”
In addition to the government’s case against Facebook, the report indicates that the Department of Justice and many states went after Google last fall with antitrust cases and as the report suggests, Amazon could very well be the next target, according to experts in the antitrust field.
As previously stated, there is nothing like filing antitrust suits against “Big Tech” for the purposes of uniting a sharply divided congress. When it comes to going after the “tech” enemy, one can easily forget political policy disputes and all come together in relative harmony.
The New Yorker report suggests, however, that all is not lost in the government’s pursuit of Facebook.
As the report says: “A congressional subcommittee spent sixteen months investigating the business practices of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook, amassing a huge cache of documents and evidence. A four-hundred-fifty page report that the committee released on October 6th concluded that “there is a clear and compelling need for Congress and the antitrust enforcement agencies to take action that restores competition, improves innovation, and safeguards our democracy.”
The aforementioned may have played a role in Judge Boasberg’s decision not to throw the government’s case out of court entirely, but then again, this is pure speculation. The New Yorker report said that the judge suggested that the “FTC rework it to address its weaknesses and then file it again within thirty days.”
The report said that Judge Boasberg wrote in his opinion: “The agency is on firmer ground in scrutinizing the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp,” The Court rejects Facebook’s argument that the FTC lacks authority to seek injunctive relief against those purchases.”
Sounds like a real ray of hope for the government. The judge admonished the attorneys general for lagging behind on this issue and for not taking action much earlier. The New Yorker report tells us that as far back as 2012 problems arose when Facebook bought its chief competitor, Instagram. “That takeover, and the purchase of Whatsapp in 2014, were approved by regulators, and the attorneys general did nothing to object until years later, when the political appetite for criticizing the tech companies had changed dramatically,” the report said.
To her credit, in December, New York State Attorney General Letitia James led a large group of attorneys general in filing “a lawsuit alleging that Facebook was a monopoly and that it stifled competition in order to protect its position of dominance, “ according to the New Yorker report.
If the FTC can fix its errors and revise its case to meet the judge’s specifications, this antitrust suit might very well set a highly significant precedent in the ravenous world of social media control on our lives.
Only time will tell!
