Posted on 08/18/2018 8:32:09 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell
Try that argument 50 years ago.
Why didn't somebody develop a competing telephone system to the Bell Telephone Company? The reason is that, once an infrastructure is in place and established in every home, it's nearly impossible to entice people onto a new system.
The solution was the break-up of Bell into the "baby Bells." This followed the pattern of the break-up of Standard Oil into the "seven sisters" because Standard had control of the gasoline infrastructure.
More recently, we've seen the break-up of single-provider home electricity distribution. Companies compete to deliver electricity on common-carrier transmission lines. The same was true for cable TV and internet services that were once controlled by the companies that initially laid the wires into the homes. Now, they must let others compete for services on their transmission lines.
Remember when Netscape sued Microsoft for bundling their Internet Explorer into the operating system? The courts ruled that Microsoft's practice was anti-competitive and ordered that the browser be decoupled to allow for competition. (As a side note, many here argued that this only happened because Bill Clinton was President and Bill Gates hadn't been as generous then with donations as he's become since the lawsuit).
So why should Facebook be any different? In fact, Facebook, YouTube, et. al., rely on ISP service providers to connect their product to customers. What would happen if Comcast, Cox, AT&T, and others decided to deplatform Facebook from their infrastructure and block their TCP/IP addresses from reaching their customers? Of course, this won't happen because the ISPs are of like mind to Facebook.
If Facebook is like the Bell Company of old, Free Republic would be like short-wave radio to them. Facebook is too established for a competitor to take it on now. The only solution is to break it up and regulate them, like Standard Oil and Bell Telephone before them.
-PJ
It was born out of the military.
Stooges at Google, Stoogle. Okay, I'll keep working on that one. :^)
In one survey, 75% of tech entrepreneurs voted for Hillary Clinton. 8.8% voted for Trump. 83% back higher taxes, 82% support gun control and another 82% are in favor of socialized medicine. Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon employees were 4 out of 5 of Bernie Sanders’ top donors. Cash from Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft poured into the Clinton campaign. $1.6 million was donated by Google employees to Hillary Clinton and Google employee money is still pouring into competitive congressional races in the midterm elections. The same is true across the tech spectrum. People have a right to their own political views. But that’s an idea that today’s Silicon Valley rejects.
Very good summary.
Big Tech needs to be sent a clear message.
End the censorship OR...we strip your section 320 protection from you and we bring anti trust actions against you....and we file lawsuits alleging you are the digital town square and therefore may not censor. Your choice. You can end censorship or we will jam the hard hand of government up your asses - with the rough end of a pineapple. Even the most perverted among you will not enjoy that.
God bless, and good luck!
I knew what but I didn’t know why or how, and now, I do. Thank you Louis Foxwell!
They’re all panty waist pussy boys who can’t do any real work
That’s why their computer geeks
They’re progressives. See my tag line.
I’m a geek, I worked on BMD systems for AEGIS guided missile cruisers and destroyers. Without geeks all you manly men would still be throwing rocks at each other.
Speak for yourself.
These are crony capitalist monopolies serving the interests of Big Government. They promote the censorship of all points of view that don't serve the need of their Big Government, crony capitalistic and monopolistic partnership.
And what happens if the likeminded ISPs start removing individual conservative websites. That seems like the next step.
Free Republic used to show up frequently on google searches of political topics. Not anymore. We’ve been shadow banned.
-PJ
And you will need to pass it to find out what’s in it.
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