While both he GOP and the Dems are still sucking up to the Silicon Valley money machines, eventually regulation is going to come. YouTube has suspended a lot more categories of legal gun videos. John Richardson has a lot more to say on this. The purpose of anti-trust law can be best understood as to prevent unaccountable political power, which Google now wields in abundance. As Stephen Green says over at Instapundit: “It’s time to regulate YouTube, Google, Facebook, and Twitter as common carriers.” I’m not sure common carrier regulation is the correct thing, but if Google is going to maintain a monopoly on online video, it’s going to have to be a lot more even handed with content. Ordinarily you don’t have a course of action for private businesses, but when those businesses are monopolists, that changes.
I’d also note for our legal people, and we have a lot of them, that there are civil remedies available under the Sherman Act. I’d also be looking at remedies under Civil Rights Act. I see no reason to wait for the state to act, when we could be filing suit now. A pretty well-targeted suit against Google would be a much more effective way to channel some populist sentiment than another Angry Dana video. Just sayin’.
Break google up into tiny bits.
There should be many parts of the Alphabet. No pun intended, of course.
If some one will set up a legal fund for just such a civil suit, I know I would be happy to contribute to it. Far to many of the tech giants have become intrusive and restrictive on the average citizen. And there are no viable market alternatives to them.
Shouldn’t this Net Neutrality that is raved about mean that large, common content distribution platforms should be, you know, NEUTRAL?
F*** No! Net Neutrality, while friendly on the surface, is the “Trojan Horse” that will give the FCC the ability to expand it’s bureacratic powers to all facets of the internet, essentially giving the Federal Government, unlimited authority to regulate anything and everything on the internet, including the flow of information.
Net Neutrality will usher in Communist Chinese style censorship of the internet.
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act is enough to reign in the tyrannical influence of monopolies like Google.
The YouTube thing is aimed at destroying the next generation of the gun culture. For me, having grown up without it, I seldom use it but for the rising generation it is essential. So the plan is to cut off the rising generation and wait for us old farts to die off. As Reagan said, freedom is never more than one generation from extinction.
The tech oligarchs are our deadly enemy and must be treated as such. This is war and no time for libertarian sentimentality. We have to use every tool in the box including government, organized boycotts (this would be a good role for the NRA),demonstrations anytime one of them appear in public, and anything else we can think of. Markets might eventually kill off these toads but they are so rich and powerful that the 2A will die first.
Also, I read that California free speech is broader and affords some protections to private facilities treated like “public forums.†This is the “Pruneyard doctrine.” I believe Twitter is being sued for free speech discrimination.
YouTube, Google, Facebook, all should get sued. They are de facto public facilities like the suburban strip malls in the 70s which gave genesis to Pruneyard.
In fact, as I read NSSF’s statement: “YouTube now acts as a virtual public square” these are magic words and its clear to me that they have the Pruneyard precedent in mind, and expect YouTube lawyers to take note.
Time to use their laws against them.
They are attempting to shame and shut us out of the public sphere. Its time to fight back.
exactly. just like the guy suing Dick’s in Oregon for age discrimination. They wanted all these public accomodation laws so %*&^ em.
The laws will be thin reeds while the judges and the legislators agree with them.
Vote, dammit!
I’m increasingly of the opinion that Section 230 of the CDA needs to be repealed. It’s turned out to be a spectacular own-goal by social conservatives that’s allowed the corporate left free reign to discriminate against speech they dislike.
It is not just YouTube. Reddit lumped their gundeals subreddit in with those offering illegal drugs, stolen identities, etc. and banned them all. This was just done earlier today. Gundeals did not sell guns or allow you to directly sell guns but rather pointed you to dealers who were having a sale along with a link.
Good plan. The thing about that is, a Democratic-led Congress would be more apt to do it than the current bit of faux showhorse “free marketeers”.
No they won’t. Google is a huge backer of democrats. Why would the democrats attack their friends?
Tam at AVFTP said some gunnies are thinking of migrating to Pronhub.
This may be an opportunity for them with a censor free Gun-hub or Sport-hub. Played right, they could take it all away from YouTube. “YouTube is soooo last year.”
A new player could do the same, look out for China or Russia to make a play? How about the Koch Bros., or the Mercers?
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Youtube was a great idea. Once again the progressive left has screwed up a wonderful thing. It had everything from clips of my favorite movies and music to repair videos for everything including (literally) my kitchen sink.
Remember these are the same people that fired James Damore for saying men and women are individuals and may behave differently.
Full 30 just needs to open up access to more content producers. They could make mega bucks marketing themselves as an alternative that’s open to all legal content.
The Omnibus financial package will, most likely, be voted on tomorrow. It includes the FixNICS Bill which is the largest invasion of personal privacy in the history of this country. It would give the Govt. unlimited authority to look into your mental health records, with no limits, and allow them to put you on a secret “no-buy†list which could take years to be removed from.
An excellent article explaining the entire scenario is here: http://www.usrkba.org/can-the-nra-ila-even-spell-due-process
If there was ever a time to call your Representative and tell them to cut out the FixNICS Bill or you’ll Redline them in the midterms, this would be it.
From a purely philosophical point of view, I’d prefer less government involvement in who a business serves, and how they serve them. Their business, their rules, right? The “public accommodations” doctrine from the civil rights era puts a major burden on businesses who one would think have the right to choose their associates and customers.
But if we stand on libertarian principle the Tech-Giant Machine will steamroll us. The Sherman Act, public accommodations law and precedents like Pruneyard and “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” need to be weaponized against the industry.
They need to be forced to bake us a cake.
That will require more judges in the courts that see the 2A as a specific enumerated right that is compatible with existing legal doctrine regarding public accommodations and free speech, not a something to be brushed aside with the intermediate scrutiny two step.
It also requires us to lobby friendly state legislatures to make gun ownership a protected class.
Is it really meaningful to speak of a business as a monopoly when you can type in a different URL at any second?
They don’t monopolize browsers. They monopolize search and online advertising.