Reclaiming Our Independence From Big Tech – WSJ

Google can swing an election. Facebook knows more about you than your spouse does. Amazon s Alexa can record your living room conversations. Yet for all the talk about the Big Tech threat, these companies keep getting bigger, more powerful and more abusive.

Republican politicians have focused on political censorship, and it is easy to see why: Conservatives are often censored on major social media platforms. Facebook and Twitter banned President Trump from their platforms while he was president.

Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee has proposed a smart bill that would make major social media platforms common carriers, requiring them to provide reasonable nondiscriminatory access to all users. Airlines can t ban you from flying because you voted for Mr. Trump, and phone carriers can t cut you off for opposing abortion. Social media platforms shouldn t be able to exclude you either.

Censorship has become an issue in the first place because tech companies are simply too big. By market capitalization, America s five most valuable companies are Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google s parent company Alphabet, and Facebook. All of them are worth more than $1 trillion. Amazon controls more than half of all online retail sales in America. Google has 92% of search. Apple s annual profit is larger than the gross domestic product of seven U.S. states.

via www.wsj.com

Hoorah.