Opinion Break up Amazon before it does any more damage to America

“The key to competitive markets is that no one entity has too much control of the marketplace,” he says, adding that no other company has violated anti-trust over the past 100 years as Amazon and its ilk. Bezos’ recent support for a universal basic income is alarming, Galloway writes, because it means he sees a near future in which Big Tech permanently puts people out of work.

“Ma Bell couldn’t have been easy to break up, and we unleashed 30 years of incredible innovation,” Galloway says. “Teddy Roosevelt broke up the railroads. If the Department of Justice hadn’t moved in on Microsoft [in 1998], do you think we would have Google? We don’t break companies up because they’re evil or take jobs or don’t pay taxes. We do it because it’s time.”

The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

Because of their power to censor the way people communicate, these media monopolies must either be broken up.  The idea that individuals have the power to control how we communicate on the Internet, whether they are in government or private individuals smacks of fascism.

In a November speech, Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, argued that “edge providers” like social-media websites and search engines “routinely block or discriminate against content they don’t like.” Mr. Pai cited YouTube’s decision to place age restrictions on and pull ads from videos by conservative commentator Dennis Prager’s Prager University, including a video by Alan Dershowitz on Israel’s founding.

He also pointed to Twitter’s suspension of a pro-life campaign ad from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, an action that would have been illegal if done by a TV or radio station. Twitter has refused sponsored tweets from immigration opponents, saying its hate-speech policy is triggered by messages such as “the fiscal cost created by illegal immigrants of $746.3b compares to total a cost of deportation of $124.1b.”

Google, Facebook and Twitter place stricter content policies on advertisers than general users. There are legitimate reasons for this. The tech companies are sensitive to accusations that they not only profit from controversial content but also fund it by giving its creator a slice of the ad revenue.

When virtually all online advertising goes through two companies, however, they have the power to harm websites arbitrarily. One political blog that posted an article trying to distinguish the “alt-right” from white nationalism received a warning email from Google’s AdSense team. An editor took the article down, explaining to readers that the blog “needs revenue from the Google ad platform in order to survive.” You needn’t agree with the editorial decision to publish the article to be troubled by Google’s vetoing it.

In his 2014 book “Zero to One,” Peter Thiel notes that because Google “doesn’t have to worry about competing with anyone, it has wider latitude to care about . . . its impact on the wider world.” If executives at a Silicon Valley monopoly believe that censoring certain content will push the world in a positive direction, market pressures cannot sufficiently restrain them.

Journalists also argue that tech companies are pushing media toward the lowest common denominator. Social media rewards clickbait—sensational headlines that confirm readers’ biases. Google and Facebook’s advertising duopoly bleeds traditional publishers of the revenue needed to produce high-quality news. At the same time, Google’s search engine is biased against subscription content, depleting another source of funding.

The bottom line is that Google’s and Facebook’s advertising policies and algorithms make it less profitable to produce high-quality journalism from any perspective. Their duopoly also gives tech executives the power to defund and block content they personally object to without taking a major hit to the bottom line.

Let’s Bust Some 21st Century Trusts

Time to break up the tech industry monopolies.  The Trump administration is the right vehicle for this.  Read the whole thing.

In terms of stock market value, the top five companies worldwide are the technology giants Apple, Alphabet (Google’s corporate parent), Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon. In the technology industry, these firms—although hardly interchangeable—are the new Robber Barons.

Apple’s famously based its business model on a “closed platform,” compelling users to accede to its vertical integration of software, parts, apps, and iTunes inventory. Amazon, with sales exceeding its 12 largest online competitors combined, captures 46 percent of all online shopping. Aggressive pricing—to the extent of consistently sacrificing profitability—and sharp competitive practices such as below-cost pricing of ebooks to promote its Kindle sales have enabled Amazon to swamp its competitors in an expanding array of product lines.

Regardless of profitability, investors value these firms primarily because of their sheer scale—market dominance within the relevant segments. Uber and Tesla, each with a market capitalization exceeding General Motors, have never earned even a single penny of profit, defying traditional models of valuation. Investors presumably anticipate that monopoly (or near-monopoly) status will eventually yield monopoly profits.

And how have the new Robber Barons been behaving with their sky-high market valuations, overwhelming market shares, and hoards of cash? In a word, poorly. If actions were words, they would be parroting Vanderbilt’s infamous declaration.

Amid great controversy, Google summarily fired an engineer, James Damore, for thoughtfully questioning the assumptions of the company’s diversity policies. More recently, Google appeared to direct the dismissal of a scholar from the New America Foundation, a progressive Washington think tank backed by Google, for praising fines levied against the company by European regulators for antitrust violations. These are the actions of an intolerant bully.

In our digital world, the Internet and websites have become the indispensable medium for both commerce and political expression, serving as the modern equivalent of the printing press, Yellow Pages, mail delivery, checking account, and public library—combined. Companies servicing the Internet—and especially search engines—are de facto public utilities, with an obligation to operate fairly, responsibly, and without viewpoint discrimination. Unfortunately, the new Robber Barons have fallen appallingly short of this ideal.

For example, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have been accused of censoring users’ posts; Google (through its ad placement service) has bullied conservative websites to alter their content or face financial retribution; online payment facilitator PayPal and domain administrator GoDaddy have banished or withdrawn funding services for websites whose content they disapprove of; and Google has reportedly skewed search results to omit references objectionable to certain Islamic organizations.

Most ominously of all, as reported by Paula Bolyard in PJ Media, Google is working with a coalition of liberal groups—including the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center—to monitor conservative websites for “hate events.” In reality, they’re policing expression of views they find disagreeable, such as opposition to the LGBT agenda, criticism of radical Islam, or support for more stringent immigration controls. The goal is to blacklist “offensive” sites, smear them as “hate groups,” and ultimately to deny them access to digital advertisers, online donations, domain registrars, or similar tech support necessary for sites to function. In other words, Google is conspiring with Left-wing activists to suppress their political opponents.

‘Regulate Them Into Submission’

With the unprecedented ability to control the content and operation of websites, a handful of tech companies wield greater power than governments do, with little transparency and no accountability. This astonishing concentration of power should concern all citizens, regardless of political persuasion. Yet, with a few exceptions, liberals have been strangely quiet. The reason is obvious: The Left has given the new Robber Barons a pass, because they share a Progressive political agenda, as reflected by Apple’s $1 million donation to the SPLC, and the hyper-partisan direction of the Washington Post since its purchase by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

Should conservatives, blinded by their allegiance to the free market, condone this partisan perfidy? Increasingly, commentators on the Right recommend treating Silicon Valley behemoths as the monopolies they are and, in Kurt Schlichter’s words, either break them up or “regulate them into submission.” President Theodore Roosevelt earned the nickname “trustbuster” for breaking up James J. Hill’s and J. P. Morgan’s notorious railroad monopoly, the Northern Securities Company. In the same vein, Attorney General Jeff Sessions should investigate the nefarious conduct of the new Robber Barons.

Silicon Valley’s leftist business leaders have a peculiar notion of “creative destruction”; rather than rendering prior paradigms obsolete, they apparently seek to eliminate free speech instead.

Faster, please.