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Just A Reminder: Authoritarians Don’t ACTUALLY Support ‘Antitrust Reform’

from the fascism-is-not-your-friend dept

A few years ago you might recall there was a three year news cycle about how the modern Trump GOP was somehow “serious about antitrust reform this time.” The party, which has never met a consolidated monopoly it didn’t adore (see: airlines, telecom, pharma, health, energy), was suddenly getting credited in the press for being a serious player in reining in the worst impulses of corporate power.

In reality, the GOP was seeking leverage against a handful of tech companies to bully them away from moderating right wing political propaganda on social media. Most of the disjointed efforts to actually crack down on corporate power or monopolization were badly crafted and went absolutely nowhere, though tech giants did ultimately scale back disinfo moderation efforts ahead of a pivotal election.

Funny, that.

I feel like we’re at risk of entering another, similar cycle with the selection of J.D. Vance as the Republican nomination for Vice President. Stories are already starting to flow discussing Vance’s bonafides as a very serious antitrust reformer, and somebody very serious about reining in corporate power. Here’s how Reuters frames it, for example:

“Vance is one of several Republican lawmakers, including U.S. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri and Florida U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz, called “Khanservatives” for their agreement with the FTC chair that U.S. antitrust law has a broader purpose than keeping prices down for consumers.”

If you recall, Josh Hawley was plastered around the media as the poster child of a new era of right wing interest in antitrust reform, buoyed at times in post-leftist circles by folks like Matt Stoller. But Hawley’s interest in antitrust reform proved entirely hollow, because authoritarians and the oligarchs that coddle them only really care about one thing: power and unchecked wealth accumulation.

Democrats and more traditional Republicans also have this fixation, but authoritarianism is a truly next-level affair that holds zero interest in democracy, the rule of law, or the public interest, and holds even less reservation about the indiscriminate use of violence. Bullying corporations to support bigotry-fueled fascism should never be conflated with good faith efforts to rein in corporate power or police monopoly.

This superficial support for antitrust reform is a pseudo-populist effort to win over low information voters that may not be fully versed with the full brutal impact of real-world authoritarianism.

It’s also intended to obscure the real goal: forcing social media giants to take the knee to the interests of authoritarians, for whom a major cornerstone of power is online propaganda and disinformation. Authoritarians that also very much dream of a future where there are no repercussions for widespread criminality, cruelty, and fraud. It’s hard not to miss the impact of those efforts so far.

The U.S. press is often complicit with this con. See here, for example, where Reuters frames Trump, despite everything we know about his corruption, as somebody actually interested in “antitrust reform” (as opposed to a petty tyrant waging a weird and unproductive grievance campaign against largely amoral self-serving corporate giants he has, falsely, misinterpreted as predominantly left wing because they very briefly tried to stop a few racists from being assholes on the internet):

“Scrutiny of Big Tech would not be a departure for Trump. The FTC and Department of Justice under Trump initiated investigations into Meta, Amazon, Apple, Google over alleged antitrust violations. All four companies were eventually sued, and have denied wrongdoing.”

These weren’t investigations as so much as they were performance art designed to bully. And if you hadn’t noticed, they were very ineffective at actually policing consolidated corporate power, but very effective in chasing big companies away from everything from moderating election lies to embracing bare-bones inclusivity initiatives.

Vance will occasionally veer from party orthodoxy to score brownie points with rural constituents (see recent opposition to successful GOP efforts to kill a low income broadband subsidy program). But he’s not going to, say, suddenly support giving the FCC the funding and authority to take aim at Comcast’s clearly harmful telecom monopoly, or start body checking pharmaceutical empires.

When you scratch below the surface on a lot of this stuff you’ll routinely find it’s simply performance.

The primary interests of the Federalist Society and the tech titan VCs payrolling Vance and friends isn’t truly cracking down on monopoly power, or limiting the power of corporations. The primary goal is the almost total lobotomization of what’s left of regulatory power (see: recent Supreme Court rulings), and the dismantling of government efforts to rein in corporate fraud.

Even if Vance isn’t just a stuffed suit authoritarian opportunist speaking out of both sides of his mouth to earn brownie points with rural voters (and I most assuredly think that, like Hawley, that’s the case,) he’s not going to be operating in any sort of political environment that allows him to pursue those interests.

A Trump Presidency means an immediate and abrupt end to the Lina Khan antitrust reform outlets like The Verge and Reuters insist Vance is a big fan of. And make no mistake: backed by a suite of disastrous and corruption-fueled Supreme Court rulings, a second Trump administration is going to absolutely crush what’s left of U.S. corporate accountability and oversight, wreaking complete havoc across consumer protection, public safety, internet policy, and labor and environmental reform.

If you think any of that actually ends well for actual American employees, consumers, and small businesses without seven-figure lobbying budgets and a trust fund, good luck.

Filed Under: antitrust, antitrust reform, authoritarianism, chevron, consumer protection, donald trump, fascism, fcc, ftc, jd vance, lina khan, populism, regulatory

[UPDATE] Elizabeth Warren Is NOT Cosponsoring A Bill To Repeal 230

from the what-are-you-doing-liz? dept

Big Update: It turns out that this was a clerical error on the part of a Senate staffer, and that Elizabeth Warren is not co-sponsoring this bill from Lindsey Graham to repeal Section 230. The Congress.gov site is expected to be corrected and her name removed as a co-sponsor some time soon. I am leaving the original story below for posterity, but it’s good to see that Senator Warren hasn’t gone completely over to the dark side on this.

Original story here:

So, just yesterday I wrote about how Democratic Senators had been shying away from co-sponsoring bills with Senator Josh Hawley. Throughout 2019 and 2020, even as Hawley’s populist fascist tendencies had become abundantly clear, Democrats were willing to partner with him because he was “anti-big tech.” But after January 6th of last year, suddenly Hawley was left shouting on Fox News, rather than teaming up with Democrats to sponsor bills to regulate the internet.

So… it was more than a bit of a surprise that, yesterday, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s name popped up as a co-sponsor on S.2972, a bill from Republican Senators Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, and Marsha Blackburn, to literally repeal Section 230.

It’s such a bizarre and nonsensical move. Even for Senators who support reforming Section 230, repealing it seems unlikely to accomplish what they think it will. And, even more to the point, Warren is apparently already aware of how removing Section 230 can cause significant harm. She was behind a previous bill in the Senate that was designed to study the impact of FOSTA on sex workers, after tons of people realized (way too late, and despite widespread warnings from multiple experts) that FOSTA would create massive consequences for the sex work industry (and related industries).

Over the last couple of years, ever since she lost the Presidential primary, Warren seems to have shifted further and further away from the thoughtful Senator “with a detailed plan to fix things” to one who has fully embraced pure, naked, populism for the sake of political gain. She’s especially leaned hard into attacking internet companies in ways that are extremely disappointing. Even if you believe that the big internet companies (and the wider internet itself) require regulation — an argument that is easily defensible — she has embraced truly extreme and unconstitutional positions that generate headlines and screams of support from people who just want to punish big companies, rather than create a better world.

This latest move — teaming up with three extremist Republican Senators — on a bizarrely stupid and dangerous plan to flat out repeal Section 230 makes absolutely no sense at all, and I don’t see how it accomplishes any of Senator Warren’s stated goals. Without Section 230, you end up helping the largest internet companies cement their position, while punishing smaller competitors and killing them with legal liability for things that they didn’t actually do.

This is an unfortunate and cynical move by a Senator who I had thought was better than that.

Filed Under: elizabeth warren, intermediary liability, josh hawley, lindsey graham, marsha blackburn, populism, section 230

from the emotional-claptrap dept

“In 1970,” observes Edmund Fawcett in his recent survey of political conservatism, “the best predictor of high conservative alignment in voting was a college education.” “Now,” he notes, “it is the reverse.” Many other statistics sing this tune of political realignment. Whereas the counties Al Gore won in the 2000 election accounted for about half the nation’s economic output, for instance, the counties Joe Biden won in 2020 account for more than 70 percent of it. Many observers have tried to capture this shift’s cultural significance. You could say that the Republicans have rejected Apollo for Dionysus. You could conclude that they have embraced Foucault and postmodern philosophy. Or you could sting to the quick, as David Brooks does, and acknowledge that “much of the Republican Party has become detached from reality.”

This political rearrangement has been helped along by much larger historical forces, among them the decline of social trust, the collapse of Christianity, the erosion of faith in experts and institutions, the flattening of authority structures and information flows, and the accelerating pace of technological change. Put to one side the knotty question whether the benefits of modernity outweigh the costs. No one can deny the size and sweep of liberal capitalist disruption.

Are Republicans grappling with the megatrends reshaping their party, society, and the world? Are the big disruptions sparking big thoughts that lead to big policy proposals? In a word, no. In fact, the party’s leaders have rallied around something remarkably small. Not for them the pursuit of the grand contemporary challenges. Their first thought, it often seems, is for how social media companies treat the extremists, conspiracy theorists, and other fringe characters on their websites. Republican legislators emit plumes of bills on the subject. Rightwing scholars and pundits take a bottomless interest in it (and in how to circumvent the companies’ First Amendment right to moderate content as they see fit). Over and over, Republican politicians say that Big Tech has become “Big Brother,” that Twitter and Facebook pose an “existential threat” to free speech, and that Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg are “out to get” conservatives. They say these things so often—they spend so much time saying them, to the exclusion of saying other things about other issues—that their voters can almost be forgiven for thinking them true.

By now people simply assume that disdain for social media firms is a key plank of the GOP platform. Should it be? Actually, that Republicans devote so much energy to denouncing content moderation is exceedingly odd. Not only is the supposed problem trivial; there is arguably, even from the perspective of a conservative, no problem at all. It is doubtful that content moderation harms the Republican Party. Some rightwing commentators all but admit as much. As David Harsanyi, an outspoken critic of Twitter’s and Facebook’s content-moderation practices, sees it, “There is no evidence that regulations, whether enforced by corporate stooges or government itself, make us safer or alter human nature or stop people from believing stupid things.” Which is to say that major social media sites have not stopped, and perhaps cannot stop, abhorrent views, crackpot views, or rightwing populist views from spreading, even thriving, online.

So why the clamor? Because the claim that average people are being silenced by “Silicon Valley oligarchs” is simple. It’s easy to grasp. It lends itself to the perpetual partisan fund drive. Above all, it’s emotional.

The right’s fixation with online speech is, at bottom, about dignity. Your rustic aunt—the one who sneers, “The election was stolen, and there’s nothing you can say to convince me otherwise!”—might be unrefined. She might be stubborn. She might even be a bit batty. But she also feels frustrated, as she struggles in earnest to make sense of a fast-evolving world. And she feels ignored, if not maligned, by journalists and intellectuals who dismiss her as a rube and a bigot. She feels treated unfairly. Whether the treatment is truly unfair is beside the point. “When you tell a large chunk of the country that their voices are not worth hearing,” writes Brooks, “they are going to react badly—and they have.”

Here as elsewhere, though, the GOP cannot square what its voters purport to want with how they so obviously feel. On the one hand, many on the right seek precisely what conservatives, in the traditional sense of the word, have sought since the early nineteenth century: security and stability in the face of innovation and churn. “To ordinary people shaken by a hurricane of social change that nobody yet understands,” says Fawcett, “the hard right promises a longed-for security of life, imagined as a common shelter.” On the other hand, the populist right is brimming with contempt for a system that rejects them. They therefore value their ability to use social media to mock academics, journalists, government officials, and other figures of authority. Theirs is (to return to Fawcett) a “gospel [that] sets itself as at war with a conservatism of prudence and moderation.”

Think of it this way. A party that celebrates the 1950s as a simpler, happier time of community feeling and patriotic elan, but that believes trolls getting exiled to Parler, Gettr, and Gab is among the most pressing problems of our moment, is by definition a neurotic mess. “The unreconciled right,” in Fawcett’s words, “cannot be said to have a coherent, thought-through critique of present-day liberal orthodoxy, let alone a positive conservative orthodoxy.” What it has instead is merely “a powerful set of rhetorical themes,” one of the most prominent of which is the accusation that liberals “stop conservatives from telling the truth about a desolate state of affairs.” Hence Republicans’ hollow obsession with what can and cannot be said on Twitter or Facebook.

Corbin Barthold is internet policy counsel at TechFreedom.

Filed Under: conservative, content moderation, online speech, politics, populism, republican party, social media
Companies: facebook, twitter, youtube

from the autopilot-to-oblivion dept

Fri, Nov 18th 2016 06:26am - Karl Bode

So we’ve noted a few times over the years how current FCC boss Tom Wheeler was a bit of a surprise for many of us covering the telecom sector. As a former wireless and cable lobbyist with some unclear policy positions, alarm bells were raised when his appointment to the chairman spot was first announced. But as Wheeler’s tenure rolled on, he wound up being arguably one of the most consumer and startup-friendly FCC leaders in the history of the agency (which, given the agency’s history as a rubber stamp for large broadband providers, admittedly wasn’t a particularly high water mark).

Under Wheeler, the FCC raised the definition of broadband to 25 Mbps (to highlight competition gaps for next-gen speeds), passed and successfully defended net neutrality rules, imposed some relatively basic broadband privacy protections for consumers, fought for an open and more competitive cable box market, fought (albeit unsuccessfully) to stop incumbent ISPs from writing protectionist state laws, and did something few of his predecessors (of either political alignment) could bother to do: admit the U.S. broadband market was uncompetitive. I was so shocked by Wheeler that I issued a mea culpa.

But that was then, and this is now.

With a Trump victory in the books, Wheeler is now headed for the door. While his tenure technically extends until 2018, it’s generally customary for the current FCC boss to step down as chairman. While Wheeler could legally stick around as a regular commissioner, it’s not clear Wheeler wants to spend his retirement years playing Sisyphus. Fearing Wheeler might continue, well, trying to help consumers in the months before his departure, the chairs of the House Energy & Commerce Committee and Communications Subcommittee this week officially asked Wheeler to avoid trying to implement any “controversial” or “partisan” efforts in his final months in office:

“I strongly urge the FCC to avoid directing its attention and resources in the coming months to complex, partisan, or otherwise controversial items that the new Congress and new Administration will have an interest in reviewing,? Senator John Thune wrote Tuesday in a letter to Wheeler…Any action taken by the FCC following November 8, 2016, will receive particular scrutiny,? the GOP lawmaker proclaimed.”

At this point we should probably remind you that the GOP has hounded Wheeler for several years now with an endless series of pointless “accountability” hearings with one core function: shame Wheeler for standing up to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. Absolutely everything Wheeler has done has been deemed “controversial” by the GOP, which was particularly incensed over net neutrality and the reclassification of ISPs as common carriers (necessary to legally defend the rules). In each hearing, Wheeler was cool under pressure despite being repeatedly shamed for simply doing his job.

People should also probably be reminded that much of what the GOP tries to insist are “partisan” issues in telecom in fact have broad bipartisan support. Net neutrality, for example, is framed as “divisive” and “partisan” by the GOP, yet has broad support from members of both political parties. Similarly, municipal broadband (communities building their own networks or striking public/private partnerships to address private market failure) is often tagged as “partisan” by the GOP, despite the fact that the idea has broad bipartisan support, and most community broadband networks are built in Conservative areas.

The public’s disdain for companies like Comcast and their lobbyist stranglehold of government is damn near universal, and indisputibly bipartisan.

Much like former FCC boss Kevin Martin did when Democrats made a similar request in 2008, Wheeler was quick to bow to GOP pressure and wipe the FCC calendar clean. With that decision the FCC is effectively now on autopilot, and most of the remaining items on Wheeler’s agenda (especially attempts to bring competition to the cable box) can be considered dead. Needless to say, consumer advocacy groups like Public Knowledge weren’t all that impressed with the FCC’s decision to give up on a number of items (like legacy business data services pricing) the agency had been working on for years:

“…the agenda items address real and pressing problems in the broadband marketplace. These problems do not simply go away due to an administration change. When Republicans take over, they will need to address the same competitive problems, or explain to the American people why they plan to perpetuate our broadband duopoly.”

A number of the things the FCC put on hold at GOP request were simply normal operational efforts the GOP would have needed to address anyway — including efforts to create a new roaming standard and to classify Voice over LTE (a higher quality audio standard). Senator Ron Wyden also issued a statement pointing out that the freeze also impacts efforts to try and expand funding for wireless broadband in more rural markets — markets that Trump repeatedly paid ample lip service to throughout his campaign:

“I regularly hear from Oregonians in rural counties that it is clear high costs are preventing private sector broadband investment in parts of rural Oregon. The FCC must fulfill its responsibility to provide a lifeline to rural communities and a connection to the global economy. Wireless cell service and broadband internet spur economic opportunity, improve public safety and increase educational outcomes for rural Americans. Any delay causes these rural communities to wait even longer for help,” said Wyden.”

What happens next isn’t entirely clear, but early signs aren’t promising if you prefer your regulators independent and with a dash of backbone. Trump’s telecom transition team is being led by Jeffrey Eisenach, a think tanker with direct ties to telecom (yet not technically a “lobbyist”) who has vehemently opposed nearly every pro-consumer policy the agency has ever implemented. Also on Trump’s advisory team is Rep. Marsha Blackburn, whose faithful support of AT&T and protectionist state laws has played a starring role in ensuring that her state of Tennessee remains a broadband backwater.

Trump has said he opposes net neutrality (even if it’s not clear he actually understands what it is), suggesting those rules will either be scrapped — or simply not enforced. Eisenach has similarly made it abundantly clear he sees the FCC’s future as one in which its influence over broadband is negligible to non-existent, and net neutrality is no longer the law of the land. In an editorial written over at The Hill in 2010, Eisenach blasted net neutrality as a “radical scheme” crafted (ironically) by bogus populists:

“Boiled down to the basics, in other words, net neutrality is a massive scheme for what Richard Posner termed ?taxation by regulation? ? the transfer of wealth from one group to another by means of government regulation….The populist rhetoric of (net neutrality supporting groups) often strikes a radical pose, but the real radicalism of net neutrality lies in the naked use of Federal regulatory power to redistribute wealth.

Eisenach, like so many incumbent ISP allies at the time, intentionally ignored the fact that net neutrality is something the public wanted by an overwhelming, bipartisan degree. And there’s nothing “radical” about preventing Comcast, AT&T or Verizon from using their last mile monopolies or arbitrary usage caps to give their own content an unfair market advantage (something they’re already happily doing with zero rating). What would be “radical” would be ignoring the will of the public and gutting net neutrality, a decision that will make the SOPA uprisings look like a small summer picnic.

While Eisenach picks a new FCC boss who shares his antiquated views, the GOP will be working on crafting entirely new broadband-industry-friendly laws. The GOP has long promised to rewrite the Communications Act with a strict focus on defunding and defanging the FCC, keeping the agency far away from the “amazing innovation” they believe magically blossoms when you refuse to protect consumers or regulate broken, uncompetitive markets. Efforts to try and do this previously have hit brick walls thanks, in large part, to the popularity of net neutrality — a popularity the GOP seems intent on ignoring.

By now, most Comcast or AT&T customers should realize the GOP’s antiquated claims that broadband is a healthy “free market” made better by gutless regulators is dated rhetoric from a bygone era of hot garbage. And while you’ll be hearing a lot of “let’s wait and see” in the months leading up to inauguration, there’s every indication the FCC will soon be reverting to its role as a rubber stamp for sector giants. Despite some potentially empty Trump campaign promises to fight the AT&T Time Warner Merger, Trump, the GOP and his transition team have made it brutally clear (in both commentary and transition hiring) that their plan for the FCC involves something in between a solid hamstringing and a frontal lobotomy.

To make it very clear: we’re gutting the FCC right at the point the agency was starting to actually listen to consumers for arguably the first time in its history — ironically, idiotically or insultingly (pick two) under the banner of “populist reform.” But overreach on net neutrality, and Trump will find himself not only on a collision course with net neutrality activists, but also with Trump supporters who signed on believing the Manhattan billionaire was leading a populist revolt.

Wheeler’s tenure floundered a bit at the tail end thanks to the agency’s refusal to seriously address zero rating, sneaky industry fees, or usage caps and unreliable meters. Even then, most consumers will remember Wheeler fondly as the first FCC Commissioner in the broadband era from either party that was at least willing to actually listen to the will of the public — a public that’s sick to death of uncompetitive broadband markets caused by letting AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast quite literally write protectionist laws that only serve to ensure market dysfunction continues.

While the future is uncertain, one thing seems likely: Wheeler’s shortcomings on subjects like zero rating are going to seem downright charming compared to the regulatory landscape currently being constructed by the next administration. Tom Wheeler, the man who went from dingo to net neutrality hero, was the closest thing to a true populist the modern FCC has ever had. Completely gutting net neutrality and his other efforts isn’t “populist reform,” it’s the political and intellectual equivalent of a roundhouse kick directly to the face of the American citizenry.

Filed Under: donald trump, fcc, jeffrey eisenach, lobbying, net neutrality, populism, rural broadband, tom wheeler

Internet Industry Hate Taken To Insane Levels: Ridiculous Proposals To 'Nationalize' Successful Internet Companies

from the say-what-now? dept

Over the last few years, there’s been a ridiculous rise in a bizarre form of anti-Silicon Valley populism, in which people are encouraged to hate successful internet companies for… being successful. Usually, when you dig into the details, the attacks on the firms are a combination of general fear of “bigness,” hatred/jealousy of success and a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. Now, let’s be clear: big companies with too much power do have a rather long history of bad behavior and companies should be watched carefully if they abuse their position. But the anti-internet populism seems incredibly misplaced, especially given that the companies they’re attacking are often companies that have clearly improved the lives of those doing the attacking. I’m always worried about old “enabling” companies becoming the new gatekeepers, but I’m also confident in the ability of a brand new generation of enablers to undermine business models of the last generation of internet giants as well — especially if they start making moves that actually harm the public.

But, it seems, this general hatred of Silicon Valley is being taken to nearly parodic levels with two new articles, one in Salon and one in Slate, both of which call for “nationalizing” some of the internet’s most popular companies. First up, we have Richard “RJ” Eskow saying that we should nationalize Amazon and Google because the original internet was publicly funded, and thus, apparently, everything built after that should be owned by the federal government.

Big Tech was created with publicly developed technology. No matter how they spin it, these corporations were not created in garages or by inventive entrepreneurs. The core technology behind them is the Internet, a publicly funded platform for which they pay no users? fee. In fact, they do everything they can to avoid paying their taxes.

Big Tech?s use of public technology means that it operates in a technological ?commons,? which they are using solely for its own gain, without regard for the public interest. Meanwhile the United States government devotes considerable taxpayer resource to protecting them ? from patent infringement, cyberterrorism and other external threats.

Of course, based on this absolutely idiotic argument, you could argue that we should nationalize just about every business out there. Fedex and UPS? Why they make use of the federal highway system, which was publicly funded. So, “no matter how they spin it,” the “core infrastructure” behind them was “publicly funded.” Ditto for the entire US automobile industry (though, to be fair, we kinda came pretty close to “nationalizing” them a few years back). How about Wall Street? I mean, look at it: it’s entirely dependent on federal currency. Clearly: should be nationalized. In fact, I’m having trouble coming up with a business that shouldn’t be nationalized under these conditions. Almost every business relies on some aspect of publicly-funded infrastructure.

From there, Eskow insists that these companies are “abusive,” which again is apparently a reason why they should be nationalized (he doesn’t explain how the two are connected or why he believes nationalized companies would be less prone to abusive power — because he can’t). But he picks some rather unfortunate examples for “abuse.”

The bluntness with which Big Tech firms abuse their monopoly power is striking. Google has said that it will soon begin blocking YouTube videos from popular artists like Radiohead and Adele unless independent record labels sign deals with its upcoming music streaming service (at what are presumably disadvantageous rates). Amazon?s war on publishers like Hachette is another sign of Big Tech arrogance.

Except, as we’ve detailed, neither of those stories is even remotely accurate. Artists are not being blocked from YouTube, they’re being offered a better deal if they want to monetize their videos. Some don’t like the terms of that deal, but they can still upload their own videos, just not to the monetized services of YouTube. And the Amazon/Hachette example is not a “war on publishers” so much as it’s an attempt to get better prices for consumers. Apparently, Eskow would like to side with the publishers over the public. Why?

Eskow also finds his “support” in odd places:

Even Microsoft?s Steve Ballmer argued that Google is a ?monopoly? whose activities were ?worthy of discussion with competition authority.? He should know.

Wait. A company that is being beat left and right by an upstart competitor is complaining that that competitor should be regulated? Gee, that means absolutely nothing.

Nowhere in the entire piece does Eskow even attempt to explain how “nationalizing” these firms would actually solve any of these issues. He just insists it would. Apparently he’s unaware of how “wonderful” service is from nationalized companies. I’m sure bureaucracies and government controls are just great for innovation. And, if we’re talking about abuse, shall we bring up what happened with the history of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were “de facto nationalized?”

Eskow also goes on and on about the privacy violations of these companies, but for a deeper discussion on that, we’ll flip over to Salon competitor Slate, where Philip Howard has an article about how we should nationalize Facebook because of that company’s long-standing problems on the privacy front:

By ?nationalizing Facebook,? I mean public ownership and at least a majority share at first. When nationalizing the company restores the public trust, that controlling interest could be reduced. There are three very good reasons for this drastic step: It could fix the company?s woeful privacy practices, allow the social network to fulfill its true potential for providing social good, and force it to put its valuable data to work on significant social problems.

Let?s start with privacy. Right now, the company violates everybody?s privacy expectations, not to mention privacy laws. It also struggles to respond properly to regulatory requests in different countries. In part, this is because its services are designed to meet the bare minimum of legal expectations in each jurisdiction. When users in Europe request copies of the data Facebook keeps on them, they are sent huge volumes of records. But not every user lives in a jurisdiction that requires such responsiveness from Facebook?U.S. users are out of luck because their regulators don?t ask as many questions as those in the European Union and Canada. Privacy watchdogs consistently complain that the company uses user data in ways they didn’t agree to or anticipate. There are suspicions that the company creates shadow profiles of people who aren?t even users but whose names get mentioned by people who are Facebook users.

It’s completely reasonable to question Facebook’s privacy practices, and its history of arbitrarily changing things and being involved in “creepy” behavior. But, again, there’s a massive leap in logic to go from “hey, Facebook isn’t very good at protecting your privacy” to “let’s hand the company over the to US government.” I don’t know if Philip Howard has been living under a rock for the past 13 months or so, but if there’s one organization that appears to respect your privacy even less than Facebook, it would be the US government. The very same US government that is actively looking for new ways to spy on as many people as possible. And Howard thinks the approach to “protect” users’ privacy from Facebook is to… give all that info directly to the US government?

In fact, Howard actually argues directly for how wonderful it would be for the US gov’t to be able to snoop through our data to perform “research” on it:

Nationalizing Facebook would allow more resources to go into data mining for public health and social research.

Somehow, he claims that if the company were “nationalized,” then there would magically be higher ethical standards to make sure this research is “good” and not “evil.” He also has a funny notion whereby if Facebook were nationalized, not only would it be useful in tracking down bad people, but “good” activists that we liked could also be allowed to use pseudonyms, rather than real names. Because that’s exactly what we want: the US government picking and choosing which activists are “good.”

Having read both of these articles, I’m kind of wondering if they’re both a form of satire, mocking the idea of nationalization or even the anti-internet populism we’ve been seeing lately — but it looks as if they’re both serious, if totally ridiculous.

Filed Under: internet, nationalize, populism, privacy, us government
Companies: amazon, facebook, google

Populist Outrage Over AIG Bonuses Scaring Private Investors Away From Buying Toxic Assets

from the backlash... dept

Before anyone gets that upset, I’ll say that I’m pretty much in exact agreement with Adam Davidson from NPR’s Planet Money when it comes to how to feel about the AIG bonuses that were big in the news last week. It’s definitely disgusting and troubling to see the money handed out that way, but it’s really a tiny sum in the big scheme of things, and there are a lot bigger and more important things that the government should be focused on. Besides, the populist anger is really misplaced — often directed at the current management or the recipients of those bonuses, rather than those who put in place the contracts that made those bonuses required. But, the very fact that Congress spent so much time on it highlights something we warned about earlier this year: as soon as the government steps in to help a business, it’s going to greatly hamstring what that company can do, since its every move will be extra-scrutinized and critiqued. That will certainly limit what many companies are willing to do.

And we’re seeing that right now. With the administration spending the weekend trying to convince private firms to buy up a bunch of the “toxic assets” out there, many are (reasonably) worried that they might face AIG-bonus-style backlash. It makes them a lot less willing to act, exactly at a time when we need private firms to step up and clean up the mess.

Filed Under: bonuses, economy, populism, private investors