from the dysfunction-junction dept
To be clear: regardless of loads of media protection claiming in any other case, the GOP (and far of the DNC) was by no means actually serious about antitrust reform. The GOP particularly has a forty 12 months monitor report of supporting unchecked monopolization and consolidation with no significant authorities oversight throughout nearly each {industry} (telecom, banking, vitality, and transportation particularly).
But in some way, through the debate over Part 230 and whether or not or not social media ought to average political propaganda and hate speech, the occasion positioned itself as being “critical about antitrust reform.” This was, in fact, a ruse: the GOP was largely simply looking for leverage to frighten Silicon Valley away from moderating race-baiting propaganda, a cornerstone of recent GOP energy.
Now, the GOP is backing further away from its brief flirtation with pretending to actually care about antitrust reform and market consolidation after Congressional legislative efforts fell flat on their face:
The Home Judiciary Committee on Friday introduced Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie, a inflexible libertarian, will function the top of the antitrust subcommittee. The appointment was a snub to Colorado Republican Ken Buck, one of many primary Home GOP critics of huge tech corporations, who was the panel’s rating member within the final Congress.
To be clear, regardless of the press narrative on the contrary, I don’t assume both occasion is especially critical about antitrust reform. Congress is just too grotesquely corrupt, and the mixed cross-industry lobbying opposition to significant reform too nice, to presently be overcome with out some type of main coverage and cultural trajectory shift and an enormous upheaval in Congress.
Some key Democrats, like Katie Porter and Lina Khan, do at the very least truly care in regards to the difficulty. Some key Republicans, like Ken Buck, type of care, however are so mired in bigoted partisan fever desires (see his threat to use antitrust to punish “woke Apple” or his tendency to shoot his own legislation in the ass) he’s successfully ineffective as any type of critical reformer.
Due to Congressional corruption, the largest push we’ve seen for significant antitrust reform in years got here within the type of a small variety of extremely narrow and problematic bills that myopically fixated only on Big Tech, and even then solely particularly large corporations with huge market caps. And even that failed to realize passage, seeing uniformly broad opposition from the identical GOP that spent the final three years pretending to care a lot about antitrust reform.
The GOP’s pretense that it was “critical about antitrust reform now” was parroted repeatedly and sometimes by the press over the previous few years, garnering unearned reward from everybody from Glenn Greenwald and Matt Stoller to mainstream political protection throughout Axios, Politico, and Semafor.
It was at all times bullshit. The GOP was merely offended {that a} handful of California corporations had begun belatedly and sloppily moderating proper wing propaganda and hate speech on the Web, cornerstones of recent GOP occasion energy within the face of unfavorably shifting demographics. The antitrust reform push was a hole gambit to scare them away from such behaviors, and it served its function.
The GOP, in fact, gained’t cease whining ceaselessly about being “censored” (learn: not with the ability to unfold bigotry, hate, and propaganda unchecked throughout the Web), however the usage of “antitrust reform” as flimsy cowl is outwardly going away, supplanted by extra generic whining about how one can’t make enjoyable of minorities any extra such as you used to have the ability to on the Web:
The appointment of Massie, a Massachusetts Institute of Expertise-trained inventor who has filed dozens of patents, indicators that the Judiciary Committee below Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio will shift its focus away from laws geared toward curbing the ability of the biggest tech corporations. Jordan has been extra targeted on free-speech points, together with large tech’s perceived liberal bias.
“We’re all united in eager to cease the censorship of conservatives and the suppression of free speech,” Jordan stated in an interview. “That’s going to be a spotlight of the complete committee work.”
As a reporter who watched the GOP coddle telecom monopolies for the final twenty-three years, pretending {that a} occasion particularly devoted to unchecked company energy and consolidation was going to “rein in unchecked company energy” and “shield customers from Massive Tech” was at all times the top of willful delusion.
The press, as they typically do, portrayed the GOP as being “critical about antitrust reform” as a result of they’re fecklessly fearful of offending sources, advertisers, and occasion sponsors. They’ll proceed to let the GOP faux it’s being unfairly censored on the Web (one thing completely deflated by science and factual data) for the very same purpose.
Filed Underneath: antitrust reform, big tech, censorship, consolidation, content moderation, corporate power, gop, ken buck, monopoly, propaganda, thomas massie
