I have been holding off on this posting until Zeckerberg testified in front of Congress and, to an extent I feel inadequate to blanket all the issues that are raised by Big Tech. In fact the effects that Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, Snapchat, etc. are having on our societies deserve a huge book. Don't look to me, dear readers, for such a treatment. I will just scratch here where I am now itching ... censorship, monopolistic power and privacy issues.
One thing that bothers me a lot is how Bug Tech is censoring free speech. Diamond and Silk had been kicked off of Facebook, the Diplomad can no longer tweet. Hundreds of conservatives have been shadow-banned on Facebook. Google searches are directed based on politician considerations ... and I'm sure there are thousands of other examples on Instagram, reddit, YouTube, etc., etc. Because many terrorist attacks have been coordinated on social media, this is as a deflection excuse for this increase in censorship of political thought.
"Opt Out" button is, I'm my opinion, the answer to the privacy issue on social media ... even if users then have to pay to do so. Hitting this button would and should erase all possibility of your private data being used for any purpose beyond what you explicitly designate. This is the new European regulation. The U.S. should quickly adopt it. Full stop.
It is staggering the degree of economic control that Big Tech has over our lives ... many say equivalent to how the big trusts controlled things at the beginning of the last century. Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google each has a monopolistic stranglehold on their respective markets and there are growing number of pundits that think they should be broken up ... see:
Seattle Times Article.
All in all, this triple whammy of political and economic power combined with the shredding of our First Amendment are reason enough to look closely at applying remedies to Big Tech. It may take new blood in Congress to do it however, because too few of the current old members seem capable of understanding what is happening ... unfortunately.
