Big Tech has managed to make large numbers of the American people believe that Big Tech desperately needs some vigorous federal regulation. Governor DeSantis in Florida has made some serious efforts. The American people are not much on more regulation, usually believing that there already is far too much of it.
Most websites offer places to comment, and if you are really angry, the address of the website sponsors is readily available so you can write them. The computer age has brought forth a new generation of “fact-checkers,” who may or may not have any claim to being so in control of reality that they can pronounce “fake” or “real” with authority, but of course that has proved to be nonsense, as Wikipedia proves. The Southern Poverty Law Center is another outfit trying to claim “fact-checking authority”. But the websites that offer access to express your opinion publicly have grown and prospered. Twitter and Facebook are the most prominent, Parler was just put out of business by Amazon, and is, I believe, now back as an antidote to Twitter.
The founders of these public conversation websites have prospered with their idea of ordinary people wanting to make themselves heard. Some people used the resource to be rude or mean, or use bad language, and were banned. President Donald Trump assumed that using the resource to talk to the American people without having to go through the very partisan press would be a good thing. The very partisan leftist fact-checkers at Twitter found that what Donald Trump had to say was out of line with their thinking and must be false. For fact-checkers, there is only true or false, (no in-between or different). So Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, the guy with the nose-ring and the world’s worst beard, banned the President of the United States.
President Trump had welcomed the opportunity to express his opinion directly to the people, without having to go through an extremely partisan press, and used Twitter extensively. A rather large contingent of the American people could have told Mr. Dorsey that banning the President of the United States was probably nor a very good idea. (He outranks you.) But Big Tech is not lacking in general arrogance. Now, however, Mr. Dorsey may have just gone way too far, moving up from banning chief executive of nations to banning whole nations.! He now as banned Australia! Banning a whole nation does take a remarkable amount of arrogance, and if it brings forth some regulation on Big Tech, I’m with Australia.
A while back, months, Tunku Varajaradan, writing fot the Opinion Page of the Wall Street Journal, suggested that these websites be regulated as “common carriers” as trains and buses are. Railroads and Bus Lines may not discriminate among their passengers. Open to all. I haven’t read the laws, but it sounds like a sensible approach. You can still ban vulgar language, but not differences if opinion, but with today’s public conversation it is perhaps not possible to tell the difference.
In any case, I suspect that banning a whole nation was not exactly a smooth move, and there will be repercussions.. Keep an eye on this one.
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American Elephants 