MUST READ: PEGGY NOONAN WROTE AN OP-ED IN THE WSJ SAYING FACEBOOK CONNED CONSERVATIVE MEDIA PUNDITS IN 2016 INTO BUYING THAT FACEBOOK WAS ON THEIR SIDE. NOW THEY MUST BE BROKEN UP AND REGULATED.
I EDITED FOR LENGTH AND ADDED MY OWN THOUGHTS.
Noonan says, that in 2016, she was invited by Mark Zuckerberg’s office to a meeting, along with 17 other conservative media pundits, to "allegedly" combat systemic anti-conservative political bias at the company. Instead, what they did was turn Republicans against each other and conned them all.
According to a Facebook employee who planned the meeting, part of the goal was to bring in a group of conservatives who were certain to fight with one another.
They made sure to have libertarians who wouldn’t want to regulate Facebook, using the line that a private company can do what it wants, and partisans who would.
Another goal was to make sure the attendees were “bored to death” by a technical presentation after Zuckerberg and Sandberg had addressed the group. Another goal was to uncover new ways to hamstring the right on Facebook.
The power went out, and the room got uncomfortably hot. But the meeting served its purpose.
Afterward, Glenn Beck, one of the invitees, wrote an glowing essay about the meeting, praising Zuckerberg. “I asked him if Facebook, now or in the future, would be an open platform for the sharing of all ideas or a curator of content. Without hesitation, with clarity and boldness, Mark said there is only one Facebook and one path forward: ‘We are an open platform.’”
So the whole meeting was a set-up to co-opt the Right. Never were pawns so happily used.
In the face of today's anti-trust talk to rein in the power of Big Tech -- Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple are spending tens of millions of dollars to build a D-Day army of lobbyists.
Break them up. Regulate them. Declare them to be what they’ve so successfully become: once a pleasure, now a utility.
It all depends on Congress, which has been too stupid to move in the past and is too stupid to move competently now. That’s what’s slowed those of us who want reform, knowing how badly they’d do it. Do it incompetently, but do something.
Why are Republicans so slow to lead? Josh Hawley says “the dominance of big tech” is a “big problem.” They “may be more socially powerful than the trusts of the Roosevelt era, and yet they still operate like a black box.”
He’s right.
But I read about lobbyists coming at Republican congressional leaders and I think, it’s going to be like Mr. Zuckerberg’s meeting with the conservatives in 2016. A tech god will give them some attention, some respect, and they’ll fold like a cheap suit.
If they are as stupid and unserious as their critics take them to be, they will go to the meeting and be used. They should say no and hit send.
This notion that Facebook is an open, neutral platform is almost like a religious tenet inside the company. When new recruits come in, they are treated to an orientation lecture who tells them Facebook is an entirely new communications platform for the 21st century, as the telephone was for the 20th.
If that’s true that Facebook is to the 21st century at the telephone was to the 20th — and I think it pretty much is — then right there is the argument that it’s a utility, and therefore subject to regulation.
I don’t believe the government should be telling Facebook what it can and can’t post (e.g., forcing it to have a quota of conservative posts). But I do think that the government has to take seriously the monopolistic role Facebook plays in the public discourse.
It’s not just Facebook. YouTube is like this too. If YouTube doesn’t like what you’re doing, they can ban you, or demonetize you. And then where are you?
This is likely to fall disproportionately on conservatives, but there’s no guarantee that certain kinds of progressives won’t feel the pressure some day. Americans should ask themselves whether they want the values of Silicon Valley to control the major means of discourse.
Standard conservatives and libertarians are arguing, on principle, that the state has no business telling private businesses what to do, even if it disadvantages conservatives. I can admire their sticking to principle, but this is an example where free-market dogma doesn’t match reality.
The Silicon Valley bigs are gathering all kinds of personal data, and exploiting it for profit. There has never been a business like this one, one that poses such extraordinary dangers of personal and political liberty. This is not merely about freedom of expression. Facebook, Google, and the others are heavily involved in "behavior modification."
Don’t you realize that all of this is going to be used against you, sooner or later?
Clinton’s Telecommunications Act of 1996, along with Reagan’s repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, totally upended the rules that had kept America’s broadcast industry competitive, and would have presumably done the same for cable and internet.
Consolidation (monopolization in new dress) has been the name of the game ever since, which effectively killed local radio, local newspapers, diversity in the music industry and journalism across the board. At the same time it allowed big conglomerates to effectively take over TV and radio, newspapers, and entertainment in general, as well as cable and social media.
This is not just a problem for America, these companies pose a global threat. They have more power and influence than any past Pope, Chinese emperor or Ottoman sultan ever had. This will be a test of every state in the world on how to deal with this massive problem.
You can’t have a free market without a policeman. If the government does not protect competition and prevent or break up monopolies, it leads straight to Oligarchy. Which is where we are now. Monopolists get really seriously big time rich. Then they buy Congress and the government. Which is what they've done. Then they own us all.
HEY PEGGY NOONAN, WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US ALL THIS IN 2016? BECAUSE IT DIDN'T AFFECT YOU THEN AND YOU DIDN'T CARE OR HAVE THE FORESIGHT TO SEE IT. WE KNEW IT WAS COMING. YOU DID NOT. WE LIVE IT EVERYDAY.
On June 2, one week before Peggy Noonan's op-ed, President Trump tweeted: "Peggy Noonan, the simplistic writer for Trump Haters all, is stuck in the past glory of Reagan and has no idea what is happening with the Radical Left Democrats, or how vicious and desperate they are. Mueller had to correct his ridiculous statement, Peggy never understood it!"
Looks like he goaded her into finally writing something constructive!
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/facebook-peggy-noonan-imperious-twerp-mark-zuckerberg-caesar/
Lol
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