America’s Big Tech companies – have more than a few things in common.
For one thing – they are massive:
Apple Market Cap: $1.1 trillion
Amazon Market Cap: $960 billion
Microsoft Market Cap: $832 billion
Google Market Cap: $823 billion
Facebook Market Cap: $470 billion
Netflix Market Cap: $151 billion
Twitter Market Cap: $23 billion
For another thing – they all have for ever and ever demanded the government impose the very crushing and stupid policy known as Network Neutrality – on Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
ISPs, we are incessantly told, are WAY too huge – and therefore MUST be reined in by these massive, constricting regulations imposed by these massive, constricting governments.
AT&T Market Cap: $236 billion
Verizon Market Cap: $226 billion
Comcast Market Cap: $166 billion
Windstream Market Cap: $164 billion
Charter Communications Market Cap: $71 billion
CenturyLink Market Cap: $24 billion
TDS Telecom Market Cap: $3 billion
If you escaped government school math relatively unscathed, you will note if you add the Market Cap totals of all seven of these ISPs – they are combined more than $100 billion short of both Apple and Amazon…all by their respective onesies. All of the ISPs together – and just Microsoft – is basically a wash.
No wonder these massive Big Tech companies are successful in lobbying governments to impose the very crushing and stupid Net Neutrality.
Apple and Amazon, Microsoft and Google – can each purchase any of these ISPs…out of their petty cash drawers. Certainly they can purchase enough government officials to get imposed the very crushing and stupid Net Neutrality.
Unspoken by the massive Big Tech companies – and their handmaidens in the media? Net Neutrality is the government mandating ISPs not charge these massive Big Tech companies…a single penny – for ALL the massive bandwidth they use.
Which means we Little Guys will pay exponentially more for our comparatively infinitesimal bandwidth – so as to augment the profits of trillion dollar bandwidth hog companies like Apple and Amazon.
Unspoken by the massive Big Tech companies – and their handmaidens in the media? There have been zero instances of ISPs violating Net Neutrality by banning or blocking people from access to anything. Ever. More than a quarter century of ISP actions and activity – NO ONE blocked. Ever.
Doubt me? Use your Web search engine of choice – and try to find examples thereof. I won’t wait for you to get back – because you’ll be gone…forever.
Can the same be said of the massively-more-massive-than-the-ISPs Big Tech companies? Are they behaving in the manner – in which they insist the government make ISPs behave? Are they offering up their massive platforms – openly and equally to everyone? Are they behaving…Neutrally, if we may?
Heavens no.
Massive Big Tech companies are very, VERY Leftist. So people who aren’t – do not fare very well on their massive Big Tech platforms.
Christian and Conservative Voices Censored by Silicon Valley
Christians to Silicon Valley: ‘Embrace First Amendment’
Conservatives to Facebook, Google and Twitter: Stop Censoring Our Posts
Big Tech’s Censorship of Conservative Users Is Alive and Well
Facebook, Amazon, Google And Twitter All Work With Left-Wing SPLC
How Apple and Google Are Censoring the Mobile Web
Amazon Deletes Reviews of Conservative Authors with No Explanation
Congressman Slams Amazon for Removing Pro-Life Christian Group From Its Charity Program
Google Is the World’s Biggest Censor
The Purge: YouTube (Owned by Google) Mass-Censors Conservatives, New Right, Classical Liberals
Conservative and Independent YouTube Channels Hit by Censorship and Demonetization
Why Critics Say YouTube Is Censoring Conservative Videos
YouTube Faces Accusations of Censoring Videos on Israel
Ten Times Facebook Censored Conservatives
Facebook Proven To Be Censoring Conservative Media
How Facebook, Twitter Silence Conservative Voices Online
‘Shadow Banning’: How Twitter Secretly Censors Conservatives Without Them Even Knowing It
Twitter Caught Censoring Conservative Journalists With Site-Wide Shadowbans
Twitter Employees Admit To Censoring Conservatives, Banning Them For Political Reasons
And on, and on, and ON, and….
We’ll assume the people who fruitlessly went deep sea Web fishing for any examples at all of ISPs banning or blocking anyone – have given up and are back. And we’ll ask them – and anyone else who demands Net Neutrality be imposed by government on ISPs:
What of the avalanche of examples just above of massive Big Tech companies behaving in inordinately non-Neutral fashion on the Net?
Having found zero such ISP instances – what say you of massive Big Tech?
You want government-imposed Net Neutrality – where clearly no such thing is needed.
Do you want government-imposed Net Neutrality – on the only people whose behavior would ostensibly, actually warrant it? The massive Big Tech companies who are incessantly, abusively and so far with impunity banning and blocking?
Meanwhile, some of We the Aggrieved – are fighting back litigiously.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple ‘Censored’ Conservative Content, $1 Billion Lawsuit Claims
PragerU Sues Google, YouTube for ‘Censoring’ Conservative Videos
But there is also a case for government action. And it is conservatives who have for a very long time made it – in their attempts to fend off the Left’s attempts to impose new, very crippling and wrong Net Neutrality regulations.
Forget the FCC — Should the FTC Enforce Net Neutrality?
“The whole debate over net neutrality is focusing on the wrong agency, according to congressional Republicans.”
“The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) – not the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – should police abuses by Internet service providers, the lawmakers argued during a House Judiciary Committee hearing Friday.
“While the FCC has broad power to regulate communications networks, the FTC focuses on abusive business practices that harm competition and consumers in all sectors.”
Emphasis ours.
Get that? The FTC exists to address “abusive business practices that harm competition and consumers in all sectors.”
Business practices that don’t exist – like ISPs banning or blocking anyone.
And business practices that are nigh omnipresent – like massive Big Tech companies banning and blocking anyone to the Right of Karl Marx.
It is not hypocritical in the slightest for conservatives to have the FTC look into massive Big Tech’s non-neutrality.
The question is – will the Left hypocritically insist the FTC do no such thing?
This first appeared in Red State.