Category: Big Tech

Think back about six or seven years or so. Facebook took over the social media world, and Twitter was contemplating upping their allowed digits in tweets to accommodate the verbose pack of young socialites dying to talk louder and with more content. YouTube allowed anyone with a cellphone camera to start their own video channel at no cost and post just about anything. Ah…Life in America was so simple then.

Then came 2016; then came Donald Trump! Social media went stark raving crazy! Social Media will NEVER be the same again.

Leave it to the Orange Man to bring the focus of almost every American to the trappings of the First Amendment. There are scant examples of serious and purposeful infringement on Americans’ right to Free Speech BEFORE the verbose Big Apple billionaire hit the campaign trail. To the horror of the Left, he was a conservative! OMG: the political world was NOT prepared for the uproar he caused, nor the results of his jumping into the 2016 presidential campaign among the populace. They were ill-prepared for the takeover of the GOP by Mr. Trump. And the majority of the Old Guard stood by and watched in horror as their kingdom evaporated before their eyes, only the be replaced by REAL conservative ideals owned by no one — except the American people! How in the world did THAT happen!

Looking in our rearview mirror, we understand now that Trump filled a void vacated by Ronald Reagan’s completed two terms in the White House. Attempts to carry forward that Reaganesque concept of government once more “of, by, and for the People” fell flat during the Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama 28-year rule over us all.

Americans were starving for someone in Washington leadership who would listen to regular citizens and confront the concerns brought to them sufficient to change things. The People watched with dazed expressions as one by one, conservatives in Congress rolled over and gave the Left everything they wanted. In doing so, it obviously mattered little to GOP leaders that their actions flew in the faces of conservative Americans: you know, those hard-working, entrepreneurial Middle-Class folks who worked their butts off to feed their families while employing others like themselves who faced the same issues.

H.W., Bill, George, and Barack all wore the public down. Many threw in their cards and learned how to “go with the flow.” It didn’t pay to try and push for the return of Reagan’s policies. The Republican mainstream kicked those to the curb when Bush 41 took the reins. Once again, D.C. became a moderately toothless and ineffective governing body. They loved it! Americans hated it.

Donald Trump was a breath of fresh air. Oh, he promised the citizenry while campaigning all the things they wanted to hear — just as had 41, Bill, 43, and Barack and Hillary was doing at the time. But he came with something his opponents — especially Hillary — did not offer: credibility. Unlike his predecessors, Trump brought some real accomplishments from his life that none of the others had! Conservative Americans liked that — and made him their president.

Social Media Explosion

They didn’t want Trump to win. They chose Hillary. Why? They could control her. They gave her campaign millions expecting her victory and then “Quid Pro Quo.” Trump turned them away. They were determined to make him pay. And pay he did. For that matter, he’s still paying for his ill deeds!

Trump spent his four years in office and since dealing with the Dragons of Control in the U.S.: Social Media giants Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Amazon. Amazon itself is NOT a social media outlet, but their CEO owns The Washington Post, which trolls Trump more closely than Zuckerberg and Dorsey!

Hillary slept for a couple of years but now has stuck her nose back into the national political scene. But she’s no longer a Washington politician. She fashions herself to be a government “Expert.” We all know what it means: Anthony Fauci better watch HIS back. Hillary has a slew of corpses in her rearview mirror!

She’s become an “Expert” on Social Media, public communications and its operations, and who should be calling the shots on the internet news, broadcast radio and television, and even in print news. She’s especially targeting Social Media.

I thought it appropriate to turn the conversation over to an expert in this field who has much personal knowledge of the former Secretary of State and First Lady: Hillary. Dinesh D’Souza is a guy who has a history of standing quietly for a while, just looking in. And when he spots significance that needs to be brought to us, he almost always “brings the mail.” We step aside for the thoughts of Mr. D’Souza:

With Hillary Clinton, I didn’t really expect a resurrection, but I knew that, if it happened, it would be a strange one. Sure enough, Hillary’s back, and this time she makes a bizarre case for why digital moguls should not only censor more; they should also be forced to censor more by the U.S. government. Her point is that democracy itself requires this, a surpassingly odd claim for a former candidate of the party that calls itself “democratic” to make.

Let’s turn to the video clip that Hillary Clinton recently released. The key sentences in an accompanying tweet are that “democracies can’t thrive when citizens can’t agree on what’s true.”

Tech companies, she contends, have made “algorithm-driven conspiracy rabbit holes a feature of our information ecosystem.” Hence, “there needs to be a reckoning” and government itself must mandate censorship when it’s not being generated voluntarily by the digital companies.

To my way of thinking, this is an attack on free speech and on democracy. It’s nothing less than a formula for tyranny. We can see this by looking more closely at Hillary’s argument. Like most arguments, it turns on the truth of its basic premise. This premise is that democracy somehow requires its participants to agree on “what’s true.” Hillary defines this to mean general unanimity on three things: facts, evidence, and truth.

Yet we have had a two-party system in this country virtually from its beginnings, and the two major parties have never in fact agreed on these things, not merely in times of great crisis, but even in calmer, more ordinary times. Hamilton and Jefferson, for example, disagreed on whether the Constitution gives the federal government the power to create a national bank. Hamilton said it does; Jefferson said no.

Both appealed to the Constitution. Jefferson said there was no specific authority in the document to create a bank. Hamilton insisted that nevertheless there was implied authority, since the Constitution proclaimed the goals or ends of government, and then gave Congress the power to do things “necessary and proper” to those ends. Thus, we have here, and on the part of two of the leading founders no less, basic disagreement on what the Constitution in fact permits.

Fast forward now to the Lincoln–Douglas debates in the middle of the 19th century. Lincoln accused his Democratic opponent Stephen Douglas of being pro-slavery. Douglas denied it, insisting he merely wanted to leave the slavery question up to each state and territory to decide for itself. Lincoln claimed that this attempt to evade the basic moral question was in fact the most pro-slavery position imaginable, because it concealed the wrong of slavery by hiding it behind a seemingly neutral procedure. Again, Lincoln and Douglas disagreed on the facts, on the evidence each side produced in support of its position, and on the truth itself.

More recently, toward the latter part of the 20th century, President Ronald Reagan proposed a missile defense program that leading Democrats said would never work. It was technically impossible. Reagan insisted that it would work. Democrats produced leading scientists—Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, the Union of Concerned Scientists—to say it couldn’t be done. Reagan produced his own luminaries—Edward Teller, inventor of the hydrogen bomb, top scientists at Los Alamos and Livermore national laboratories—who said the exact opposite. A basic dispute over facts!

This dispute over facts became a broader dispute over evidence and truth. Democrats went on to say that no missile defense could stop every incoming Soviet warhead. Reagan said that wasn’t necessary, since deterrence could be achieved merely by blunting the force of a Soviet first strike against American land-based missiles and military targets. Bottom line: The initial dispute over technical possibilities became a broader dispute over what the real objective was, and what was necessary to get there.

Finally, let’s consider the events of Jan. 6. While the Democrats insisted that they witnessed an insurrection, a terrorist attack, and an attempted coup, they never bothered to define these terms and match them up against what we actually saw, what actually happened. As many conservatives and Republicans have subsequently asked, is it possible to have an unarmed insurrection? The last insurrection against the U.S. government was in 1861, the attack on Fort Sumter. Can Jan. 6 reasonably be compared to that?

The other terms seem equally preposterous. Coups are forcible attempts to overthrow a government and seize power, as with the Pinochet coup in Chile. Yet on Jan. 6 no one even stuck around the Capitol for more than an hour or so. What kind of coup attempt is that? Finally, is it possible to have a terrorist attack without anyone being killed? The only person intentionally killed on Jan. 6 was Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter, shot by a Capitol Hill police officer. What resemblance is there between Jan. 6 and genuine terrorist actions like the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11? The answer is clearly none.

The basic point here is that truth is elusive. It doesn’t come delivered on a silver platter. It emerges as a consequence of ongoing, spirited debate. Even the basic terms of the debate are often disputed. Facts are in dispute, evidence is in dispute, and truth is seldom agreed upon, if ever. This has been known at least since the time of Socrates, who said that ignorance is man’s natural condition and knowing how little we know is the first step toward wisdom.

Hillary’s clear motivation is to make herself, and her party, and the digital moguls that are allied with her side, proprietors of the truth. They get to say what facts are really facts, minimizing all facts inconvenient to their narrative. They get to decide what counts as evidence, dismissing evidence that strengthens the case of the other side. They become custodians of truth itself, and arrogate to themselves the right to silence the other side in the name of protecting truth from error.

In the name of protecting democracy, Hillary is attacking democracy, because democracy requires free and open debate so that citizens can see the diverse courses of action available to them, and hear the competing cases for going one way instead of another way. Only then can they make wise decisions upon adjudicating the merits of the facts, evidence, and arguments presented to them. We can either have the robust give-and-take of genuine democracy, or we can let Hillary and her ilk decide everything for us, and rule tyrannically over us.

Summary

I heard one conservative talk show host soothe the concerns of conservatives in a conversation about Big Tech and Social Media going after conservative content: “The federal government will never allow that. A case or two will end up at the Supreme Court, which will kill these attacks on the First Amendment.” One thing I’ve learned over the past 20-3o years is “never say something will never happen.”

The Left is armed and ready to take total control of everything that is part of communications. They feel empowered by their control of Congress and the White House. By flooding our border with illegals with no end in sight, it is obvious they plan to not only provide everything those illegals need to survive in the U.S., but they will also eventually give them each citizenship with a right to vote. With that comes the universal control of one party.

Power: it’s ALL about power. Controlling the votes will give Democrats unfettered power over the nation.

Will that happen? Your bet’s as good as mine. And mine says it’s becoming more and more likely each day this American populace allows continued law-breaking with NO accountability implemented for doing so by our federal government. Who would have thought they’d all be thumbing their noses at any law-breaking without enforcement of those broken laws? Bush 43 is today voicing his support for the continued allowance of these illegal migrants!

Do you want to let folks like Hillary Clinton set ANY standards for regulating Americans in any way?

“Nothing changes if Nothing changes.”

If those who govern are not soon forced to abide by the Rule of Law, we better all take Spanish lessons. Soon, instead of an automated telephone message that asks the caller to push for one for English, it’ll be a message that says, “For English, press number 4.”

I don’t know which languages will be numbers 1 through 3. But the fact that English drops to #4 tells a lot about Leftist goals and objectives. And Social Media giants will be nothing but partners in the dismantling of the United States of America.

To Download Today’s (Tuesday, May 11, 2021) “TNN Live” Show, click on this link:

As leftists become increasingly emboldened following Big Tech’s recent purge of President Donald Trump from the Internet, a far-left CNN reporter is now calling for conservative news outlets to suffer the same fate. CNN’s media reporter Oliver Darcy is calling for prominent conservative news networks to be punished for “providing large platforms to bad-faith actors who lie, mislead, and promote conspiracy theories.” According to Darcy, outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN are using their platforms to “poison the public conversation.” Darcy argues that a Big Tech purge doesn’t go far enough, insisting that cable TV providers must also take action against news networks.

“We regularly discuss what the Big Tech companies have done to poison the public conversation by providing large platforms to bad-faith actors who lie, mislead, and promote conspiracy theories,” Darcy wrote in CNN’s “Reliable Sources” newsletter. “But what about TV companies that provide platforms to networks such as Newsmax, One America News — and, yes, Fox News?” Darcy suggested that it was not just the anchors on these networks who should be held responsible for what he insists are lies, but cable providers who continue to host those networks.

Darcy then went about contacting numerous providers, including AT&T, CenturyLink, Comcast, Verizon, and others to ask them about their guidelines and “if they have any regret over carrying right-wing channels that were in many ways partly responsible for what took place in our nation’s capital this week.” CenturyLink was the only provider that responded to Darcy’s questions, telling him that, as a company, it was committed to providing “a variety of broadcast channels covering thousands of topics” and that it did not “endorse specific media or outlets.”

Darcy accused the other providers of dodging questions for not responding quickly enough. CNN, you may recall, spent years pushing the hoax that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. Darcy’s attempt to censor his competitors comes after Big Tech began its crackdown on Trump and his supporters. Needless to say, the permanent ban by Twitter of President Trump’s account thrilled leftists in the media. The Jack Dorsey-owned platform claims that Trump’s tweets about his supporters continuing to be heard and not attending Joe Biden’s inauguration somehow violated Twitter’s guidelines on inciting or glorifying violence. Neither of those tweets included calls for violence of any kind, by the way. In fact, in the blocked tweets, Trump urged his supporters to “go home” and “love & live in peace.”

On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump tweeted:

“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

Shortly thereafter, the President tweeted:

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

Twitter then responded:

“Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks. After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service.”

Facebook also banned Trump from posting during the remainder of his term in office, and Snapchat banned him as well. YouTube suspended Trump’s account. Google and Apple took the next step of removing popular Twitter alternate Parler from its app stores, while Amazon booted the social media platform from its servers. President Trump was expected to start using free speech-focused Parler following his purge from the other market leaders.

CNN Becomes the “Censor-in-Chief” Among Cable News Networks

CNN’s self-proclaimed on-air Censorship Guru — Brian Stelter — welcomed a former Facebook employee on his show to discuss the censorship of conservatives. The fact that CNN entertained any discussion of media censorship is an oxymoron: CNN is just a news outlet that should be scared to death of even discussions of censoring any news media! But then I realized we ARE speaking of Brian Stelter initiating those talks. Stelter has been consistent in at least one thing on-air: forgetting about being a “news commentator.” He is anything  but that.

Stelter spoke with that former Facebook censor Alex Stamos. One would expect such a conversation with those two would be about the evils of censorship in media: you know, that “First Amendment thing.” What was NOT unusual was how far Stelter took the conversation away from Big Tech media censoring to the suppression that he says is needed of conservative news outlets One America Network (OAN), News Max, and, of course, FOX News. Listen to the back and forth and then the justification for such censorship explained by Stamos:

Big Tech and Big News Tag-Team Against Conservatives

It is a given that the employees at the tech companies and national news networks are motivated by politics, at least on a superficial level. Silicon-valley based organizations are predominantly staffed by far-left progressives who are responsible for banning or suspending users who express views that contradict their far-left ideology. Leftist television news organizations fight to keep conservative views from showing on their news shows.

These individuals are trying to safeguard the progressive political agenda. By limiting the dissemination of views or news stories they find dangerous, the leftists who are able to decide what is seen and what is not seen wield incredible power, and they have no qualms with using it.

But political motivation does not fully explain why these folks choose censorship over political discourse in which both sides are allowed to make their points. One can have a particular political viewpoint without desiring to silence those with whom they disagree. In fact, competing on the battlefield of ideas has been one of the bedrocks of American political discourse since the nation’s inception.

And therein, as they say, lies the rub.

Far-left progressives have a tendency to eschew political debate, preferring instead to silence their political opponents. The root of the issue is not hard to discern.

It is fear.

Progressives who support, and engage in, censorship do so because they are afraid. They fear that their ideas will not stand up to scrutiny. They worry that they will fail to persuade Americans to embrace their Marxist utopian ideals. People who push back make it more difficult for people on the far left to convince the rest of the country to join up with their cause.

They are afraid of conservatives.

When you see videos of leftists who are clearly filled with hatred of people on the right, you are seeing people who are afraid. When progressives justify censoring of  conservative voices, you see hate on the surface, but it is fear that is driving that hate.

The fact that progressives are afraid of more Americans being exposed to views that contradict their own reveals something they would rather we didn’t know: their hold on the culture is not absolute. The far-left is not invulnerable to attack. In fact, their fear demonstrates a serious lack of confidence in the validity of their ideas and their ability to persuade most of the American public to espouse them.

The advent of alternative media avenues like social media, internet television, YouTube, and other platforms has allowed conservatives to undermine the overall influence of the corporate press. Establishment media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and others no longer have the ability to determine what voices America hears. This is why they are cracking down on conservative opinions most recently on social media.

However, this does not mean they will win. Indeed, the fact that they are afraid shows that we can defeat them as long as we continue finding ways to work around their attempts to silence us. The only way we can lose is if we stop fighting.

For two years or so, the drumbeat for reining in Big Tech has been getting louder. Critics have suggested solutions from breaking up Facebook and Amazon to regulating social networks and search engines as public utilities. The heads of major tech firms have been hauled before Congress numerous times now. The House Antitrust Subcommittee called for a breakup of the biggest of the Big Tech companies after a lengthy investigation.

The Senate Commerce Committee heard the testimony of top social media company CEOs to discuss the legal provision that provides broad legal immunity around content on their platforms. Most significantly, the Department of Justice (DOJ)  in October brought an antitrust lawsuit against Google — the most critical anti-tech antitrust action since the 1998 case against Microsoft.

There is clear legal, regulatory, and political momentum behind taking these actions, and there will be no turning back. The question is: Is this and even more anti-tech antitrust the right tool to address America’s most significant technology problem?

Historic as these companies’ power challenges may be, the long history of antitrust action against Big Tech is not encouraging — particularly if you are hoping for a big company to be broken up outright. In 1956, the Bell System monopoly was left intact after a seven-year legal saga. The antitrust action against IBM lasted 13 years. Outcome? You guessed it: The behemoth remained unbroken. The 1998 fight against Microsoft, in which the government argued that bundling of applications programs into Microsoft’s dominant operating system constituted monopolistic actions, ended three years later with a settlement and the company intact.

Today’s technology industry is more complicated than in the Bell System, IBM, or Microsoft cases. Moreover, while public sentiment had swung against Big Tech after the 2016 presidential elections and especially in the wake of the Social Media giant censorship in the runup to the 2020 election, rampant reliance by Americans on social media communication during the COVID-19 pandemic has put a blinding spotlight on Big Tech companies. Google is just one example, and many feel just the first of many that the DOJ will go after.

Antitrust action against these companies will be long and drawn-out — no matter its conclusion — for several reasons. First, the complaints against the industry are varied, ranging from anti-competitiveness to privacy issues, censorship, publishing and editing social media content, data protection, and vulnerability to misinformation. Second, there are multiple large companies in the crosshairs, with different products and different suggested remedies. Third, numerous agencies are pursuing action, from the DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission to the House initiative led by Democrats to the Senate initiative led by Republicans. Each has a different approach, motivation, and timeline. Fourth, technology itself keeps evolving. Finally, there is a precedent for settling with the tech industry: Previous antitrust actions have resulted in settlements or consent decrees where lawmakers got something from each of the companies in exchange for leaving them intact, which might well encourage companies to drag the fight out as long as possible. Putting these considerations together, it is reasonable to expect a lengthy process that risks frittering away any momentum and ends with a settlement that resolves issues on the margins.

What can be done to make productive use of any momentum for reform in the wake of the Google litigation? First, we need to ask just what tech problem we want to solve — and there are many crying for attention. Lack of competition is one: Consumers have limited choices in search engines, social media platforms, and e-commerce platforms. Several applications or services are owned by platforms, giving the latter an unfair advantage. For instance, Amazon is a marketplace for third-party sellers, but it also competes with those merchants by selling Amazon-branded products. Privacy is another issue: Americans still do not have consistent data protection laws. Beyond that, users on social media are vulnerable to being fed misinformation. They are struggling with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube’s censorship of content in the name of “company policy violations.”

While these problems have severe implications for the competitiveness of markets, functioning of democratic institutions, and preservation of privacy (not to mention First Amendment violations), there is a deeper, more foundational problem that receives much less attention – and more urgently needs to be solved.

It is difficult for most Americans to believe, but the United States’ most serious tech problem is that half of Americans struggle to get online at all reliably! At a moment when nine out of 10 Americans say internet access is essential, according to a Pew Research study, this is a devastating divide. Work, school, health care, socializing, and, often, shopping for essentials have primarily moved online, which means the absence of a reliable digital connection can drastically impact individuals, families, and businesses. If I am among the 162 million Americans without access to a decent internet connection — with download speeds of at least 25 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of at least 3 Mbps — or who cannot afford the most expensive broadband access in the world, I have an urgent problem on my hands. My child may be attending school online in a Taco Bell parking lot or huddled under a blanket outside a closed school to piggyback on its wi-fi system because those places happen to have the nearest internet connection. My telehealth visits with my doctor are likely interrupted because of a spotty internet signal. My employment is in jeopardy because I must log onto a jittery Zoom connection that’s unreliable at best. The usual go-to places for many consumers for getting on the internet — community centers, schools, libraries — are closed. Who hasn’t gone to their local Starbucks to drink a cup while using the internet to surf the web or login on to our company’s server? COVID-19 has Starbucks shuttered!

The access gap both mirrors and reinforces inequality in the United States. The picture is far worse for the Black and Hispanic populations. Data analyzed from a recent massive research program suggests that, depending on where one lives, the most basic digital product — reliable access to the internet — has failed the test of inclusive digital access to education, health care, and jobs. To make matters worse, the same parts of the country where schools are woefully unable to go digitally remote — Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Montana, and Arkansas, for example — overlap with the parts of the country where schools should be run remotely because of failing public health guidelines. These states also suffer from limited access to telehealth, employment opportunities, and online government services.

Lawmakers and regulators have an unusual opportunity right now: They can use their leverage over the most innovative and best-performing technology companies to solve the problem of internet access. They can do this now before any other issues get discussed en route to a full settlement in this Google antitrust litigation and any future actions by the DOJ. Lawmakers can press for the four Big Tech players that are their primary targets — Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple — to collaborate on identifying the broadband deserts in the U.S. and designing a plan to collectively fill the gaps in a way that is affordable to users and gives them no advantage as gatekeepers. Agreeing to be a part of this solution then permits the companies to remain at the table for further negotiation. This will create the right incentives for companies to participate and take action.

These companies are already in the business of providing internet access. Facebook offers free access to a limited version of the internet in more than 60 countries through its Facebook Connectivity initiative, with solutions ranging from low-cost wireless connections in dense urban areas to high-altitude platforms for connecting remote sites to free basic internet access in developing regions. Alphabet has a fiber deployment project, and Loon, an Alphabet unit, uses balloons, unmanned aircraft, and high altitude platform stations. Amazon has plans for deploying more than 3,000 low earth orbit satellites to offer broadband service everywhere, and Apple has a similar project in the works.

These companies have the resources, as the pandemic has already driven historical profits even higher, and would be interested in cooperating if there is an expectation that it might help reach an eventual settlement on the other issues on the table. It could be in the self-interest of these companies, as expanding access also expands their consumer base. After all, these companies have already invested in inexpensive internet access projects for a reason. It must be because they expect to see commercial value from expanding the market.

Summary

The 900-pound gorilla in the Big Tech room right now is Censorship. If censorship at your personal or business social media account has not yet impacted you, you’re probably not too concerned. But when it happens, I promise you the feeling is one of total violation. We live in the greatest and freest nation in World history. We have the First Amendment guarantee that loosely stated, promises that anyone can say anything to anybody at any time: Free Speech! The Free Speech gorilla is dominating our attention while we are losing sight of the big picture.

I lived through the AT&T breakup. I also remember the reason the antitrust action was taken to stop AT&T’s dominance in the telecommunications business, including local and long-distance. What I remember is since that happened, customer service in every segment of telecommunications is impossible! There were other negatives that came with all of that. But what has been the result of that breakup? AT&T bought-up all the Bell companies, and now we have AT&T again! There’s no “Southern Bell, Southcentral Bell, Pacific Bell, Northwestern Bell,” etc. We have AT&T!

I don’t think we ought to sit here and suffer through another monstrous, costly, and decades-long break-up of just one of the Big Tech companies. There needs to be a thorough and realistic plan developed in a government/private endeavor in which all of the Big Tech companies work with a group of government specialists (to be named) to, instead of more antitrust litigation, develop a plan to answer the existing problems and any new ones as they appear.

The first “next” step that might show Big Tech how serious are these issues might be for the U.S. House and Senate to unanimously pass a bill to eliminate the indemnification for all of these companies they currently possess under Section 230 of the FCC Decency law. President Trump will sign it immediately.

How do you make a deal? All parties meet and discuss the concerns of any deal proposal with everyone at the table. Identify the differences, concerns, and expected and desired outcomes. THEN craft a solution. “This is too big a monster to try with one solution to repair everything.” That could likely be true. So create dozens of solutions!

Washington has never been successful at quickly and crafting and implementing plans to make things better. (That’s one thing that Donald Trump showed the nation works almost every time!) This issue with Big Tech is a really BIG issue that must be resolved. There are hundreds of billions of dollars at stake. But there are also millions of Americans who need the ability to access and use Big Tech and all they have to offer without feeling they are taken advantage of. Let’s be honest: Big Tech definitely takes advantage of Americans in both government and private sectors.

It must STOP!