Twitter and Technocratic Rule

An ongoing debate is centered around questionable actions by technocracy in social media. An excellent legal conundrum consisting of plenty gray areas and scarce precedence. The argument is encompassed by a position that expresses private companies may do as they please regarding censorship while the opposing position advocates for a regulatory body to oversee censorship efforts. This does not stand as a first amendment issue; a social media platform does not issue rights — they only establish a medium. Private companies, just how employers can infringe on speech in a workplace, can infringe on speech within their platform. As users, we sign terms and conditions to which we agree to abide by.

Knowing that fact limits the recourse for action by those who may argue to establish some sort of regulation over the powerful social media platform which provide a service for millions of users. The argument regarding platform free-speech and its technocratic governance is valid and stands not to be challenged. The remedy chosen has recently been movement to either repeal or reform section 230 Community Decency Act (CDA), which protects the platforms themselves and leaves users responsible for the content they post. CDA also brings platforms the liberty of not being sued for censorship acts. Former Senator Rick Santorum sums up the prevailing sentiment of 230 by stating “Conservatives blame the law when their more-provocative content is restricted or removed by the big social-media platforms; but progressives blame the same platforms for failing to remove what they see as hate speech and misinformation. So some want to get rid of 230 because it limits speech, while others want to eliminate 230 because it doesn’t limit enough speech!” I see conservative action on section 230 as setting poor strategic precedent politically. The results of such a pursuit will most likely lead to newly spawned regulatory agencies bearing costs while simultaneously, social media firms burdened with the responsibility of rigorous oversight regarding content. All in the presence of new sets of responsibilities and consequences for content. Principally, the harsh expansion of federal oversight and burden assumed by private firms seems to not align with conventional conservative values. The possibly successful pursuit will feed into potentially dangerous censorship acts from across the political aisle. A loss in the conservative fight against echo-chambers. A conventional American goal should be to incentivize the market for ideas. Historically, this is what has made our nation great. The faith in humanity and the U.S. to choose what is best for us as individuals n. Regardless, freedom comes with the implicit trade-off that while we can make our own choices with what resources we have… we may make the wrong choices as well. That is a trade-off to freedom we must accept.

I believe there is a different course of action in alignment with conventional conservatism and will prove to seek truth in the matter. The pathway to fact is by vehicle of antitrust law. Through antitrust law, an approach could be chosen to potentially find a solution or settlement with the result in improving functions of the free market. Such an avenue could have precedence set through 1998 antitrust charges on Microsoft. A verdict which determined violations in the Sherman Antitrust act. Pursuing the same path may prove successful by presenting claims of similar violations detailing the cartel of social media firms i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Google, and their corresponding subsidiaries. With the existence of such industry moguls, it presents a problem to potentially competing firms who choose to tolerate the formerly undesirable content. Parler for example, is an up-and-coming social media network which is attempting to compete as a social media platform and recently has been removed off various other platforms it has used to reach consumers (Apple App store, Amazon, and Google as of now). Various other barriers include being denied bank accounts or payment accounts as well as essential services like web hosting or hacker protection due to rejecting technocratic philosophy. In my eyes and many other legal experts’ eyes, this is not a free-market functioning as it should and could be subject to litigation under Sherman Antitrust violations. The burden of proof would be displaying cartel control of industry aimed at anti-competitive behaviors. Potential examples could be pursuing qualities of Facebook’s monopolistic control of advertising data, Apple’s technocratic tendencies within the app store, or Google’s digital advertising. Another angle through antitrust laws include the option to define these platforms as public utilities. A legally rational argument, as they do present the qualities of a natural monopoly. The qualities can be summarized through Dipayan Ghosh’s Harvard Business review article which proposes that a set of processes must be used first to pursue a legal avenue. The steps include first determining the market power of the firm. Second would be determining if there is historical evidence to confirm that the firm has used market power to exploit consumers. A real-world example of that given was the firms ability to extract user data to package and resell for monopolistic rates. The third step would be to determining the foreseeability for other firms to compete in the market. If confirming all three steps, the conclusion is that the firm constitutes legally as a “natural monopoly.” The route after the determination includes harsher oversight (by existing institutions) in investigating the behavior in these firms and legal recourse to promote a functioning competitive market. The end goal being to reduce the overall monopolistic power these firms exhibit on the marketplace, so it functions as reasonably accessible to new firms who attempt to compete. It is a win in freedom for the marketplace and firms who wish to keep power in the private market.

In my view, I see this as a pressing issue that necessitates action in some form. This position is from someone who sees censorship as a potential problem to all areas of the political spectrum if normalized. The overall public shares the following concerns which should be addressed:

· Around seven-in-ten U.S. adults (72%) say social media companies have too much power and influence in politics today

· About three-in-four Americans (73%) say it’s likely that social media sites intentionally censor political viewpoints they find objectionable

· About two-thirds of Americans (66%) say they have not too much or no confidence in social media companies to be able to determine which posts on their platforms should be labeled as inaccurate or misleading

· Around three-quarters of Americans (77%) say it is not very or not at all acceptable for social media companies to leverage users’ data to show them ads from political campaigns