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In China, authoritarians flood Twitter with ads for prostitutes and pornography in an effort to prevent users from obtaining information about protests. Authoritarians in the United States threaten to remove Twitter from more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide.
“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store,” Elon Musk tweeted, “but won’t tell us why.”
The powerful few want to impede the free flow of information to the vulnerable many. Suppression strikes intelligent observers as not a Chinese thing but a fetish of the powerful in whatever nation they reside. It appears cruder and more thuggish in China, and more passive-aggressive and sophisticated in the United States. But whether the state or a monopoly suppresses expression, does the crushing effect of it on a free society really differ?
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke of “monitoring” and “keeping a close eye” on Twitter (big sister is watching!), which, she claims, bears a responsibility to “take action” against “misinformation” and “hate.”
Does not the federal government bear a responsibility to ensure that the United States remains a free society?
Instead of breaking out of the stranglehold Apple and Google have placed upon the information that we consume, the White House publicly nudges tech companies to censor.
Instead of breaking out of the stranglehold Apple and Google have placed upon the information that we consume, the White House publicly nudges tech companies to censor.
Traditionally, the federal government assumed a massive role in ensuring, particularly when it came to communications, that no company controlled too much of the market share. During the 1940s, the feds forced NBC’s Blue Network to separate from the parent company. It eventually became NBC’s competitor ABC. Later, after decades of litigation, the government broke up the Bell System into the seven “Baby Bells” (four of which once again folded into “Ma Bell,” otherwise known as AT&T). This similarly resulted in a competitor to the monopoly in Verizon.
Now people in positions of power cheer on the consolidation of information. Instead of breaking out of the stranglehold Apple and Google have placed upon the information that we consume, the White House publicly nudges tech companies to censor. Privately, we may learn that political actors do much more than nudge.
