Online Political Bias? Cluebat On The Way...

The reason Goolag, Faceschmuck and the Twit-verse don't get sued for what is posted on them is they have maintained the fiction that they're a content-neutral pubic conduit, not a publisher of content. But recent collusions and ham-fisted wholesale banning of only conservative content have finally moved the government to take them to task, with one of the biggest weapons they have: antitrust laws.

(MORDOR ON THE POTOMAC)“… Executive departments and agencies with authorities that could be used to enhance competition among online platforms (agencies) shall, where consistent with other laws, use those authorities to promote competition and ensure that no online platform exercises market power in a way that harms consumers, including through the exercise of bias.”
… Not later than 30 days from the date of this order, agencies shall submit to the Director of the National Economic Council an initial list of (1) actions each agency can potentially take to protect competition among online platforms and address online platform bias.”

That's the draft of an Executive Order President Trump hasn't signed yet, and the reason it's being circulated (besides the fact that Obama hold-outs in twenty agencies will leak it anyways) is because with the stroke of a pen, it could be signed, unleashing a metric fuckton of woe on the Leftard lunacy pervading Silicon Valley social media giants, and sending rivers of urine down their collective legs.

For the youngsters out there, one of the main reasons you have a cell phone is that Ma Bell and a dozen regional Bell telephone companies were broken up by federal anti-trust laws, after a decades-long federal antitrust investigation, before which you were raked over the coals for long-distance service, and tied to your land-line because they wouldn't let anyone else into the telephone monopoly game.

You're going to see this draft memo's effect reflected Monday morning, when stock prices in all those internet vaporware holdings tumble into freefall. That will be real dollars disappearing into the ether of non-existence. And that's just on the prospect of a limitless endless federal investigation into their shady shadowbans and outright deplatforming tactics against conservative thought. Because fighting the government on antitrust is like fighting the IRS on a tax audit: only one side ever wins, and even if you did survive, it would cost you an arm and a leg in legal expenses, and that comes right out of profits. And unlike brick-and-mortar business, those costs get dropped on advertisers, not users and customers directly, which cuts social media's own throat.

In short, they've pulled the roof in on top of themselves, by painting a giant "Kick Me" bullesye target on their own backs, and now, by openly contemplating legal action, the President is firing the last warning shot they're going to get across their bow.

The fist is cocked at the bully's nose, and the next moves they make determine whether or not blood is drawn.

About m*****f*****g time.

The days of making conservative speech an easy online target just ended.

Unless a given company wants to spend half of revenues fighting (and ultimately losing) to the federal government.

From a purely limited government perspective, this is bad. But from a "stop dicking around with content" perspective, this will re-level the playing field.

You did this to yourselves, social media jackholes. Welcome to power politics, in a way you have no power to politick against.

 

Addendum: It seems the rest of the world, especially the EU isn't showing the tech giants any love either.

Google currently faces a fine that is several times greater than Microsoft's penalty. Further, Google also faces a proposal that it be fined 5 percent of its total worldwide revenue for every terrorist message it fails to delete within 60 minutes.
Facebook and Twitter likely aren't very impressed with Google, given that they face the same potential fine. What this means is that it would take just 20 late deletions for Google to lose a year of revenue -- that's revenue, not profit -- and 100 misses would result in five years of revenue lost.
To put this in perspective, Google makes round US$50 billion a year, so 100 missed messages would cost the firm a quarter of a trillion dollars. For perspective, that would represent about 1.5 percent of the EU's total GDP and exceed by $50 billion the EU's total defense spending. That's effectively free money.

Boo frickin' hoo.