If the current pandemic has taught us anything, it’s how vital our interconnected world has become.
During the coronavirus and the ensuing societal lockdown, websites that once seemed somewhat trivial such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have become essential sources of information for White House livestreams, breaking news, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, and so much more. And applications that once seemed more for teenagers or professionals such as Zoom, Google Hangouts, and FaceTime are now key to maintaining human interaction during quarantine for everyone from school children to the elderly.
So, it sure is a good thing that policymakers so far have ignored the loud cries from the likes of populists such as Sens. Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren to break up or heavily regulate large tech companies. We would be in a significantly weaker position during the ongoing crisis had we heeded their misguided calls to cripple the entrepreneurial freedom that has allowed the American tech industry to become the envy of the world.
Consider Hawley’s “Social Media Addiction Act,” introduced last August, which would have mandated features to push users to limit daily usage of social media applications to 30 minutes per day and imposed scrolling limits. Does anyone think that it would be wise now for our use of Facebook, key to communicating with parents and grandparents in isolation, to be interrupted by a 30-minute limit? With coronavirus case updates changing day-to-day, is a scroll limit on Twitter practical when citizens are demanding up-to-date information?
This was not Hawley’s only bad idea about how the government should dictate private tech companies do their business.
Last June, he introduced the “Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act” that would have required tech companies with revenues over $500 million to be certified as “politically neutral” by a board of government bureaucrats or risk losing protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 shields websites from being held liable for the content users post, such as comments, blog posts, and bad reviews.
Let’s imagine that Facebook, for instance, had to comply with Hawley’s proposal today.
This would mean that the site would have no control to remove content from a “conservative” site such as Infowars spreading false information about the virus, as Alex Jones did last month by claiming a toothpaste he sells can cure the virus. We would certainly be worse off in the battle against the coronavirus if dubious actors were unleashed to spread conspiracies about the source and treatment of the coronavirus.
That is not to say that sites such as Infowars shouldn’t have the free speech protections afforded to them in the First Amendment. They absolutely should be free of government censorship.
However, free speech for an individual does not come with an obligation for a company to amplify his or her message. It is precisely because Facebook has a walled off platform with content moderation standards that people are attracted to the website. A Facebook full of pornography, harassment, and misinformation during a crisis would likely not be a strong business model — and more importantly, it would be online anarchy.
However, populist Republicans such as Hawley aren’t the only ones to offer terrible ideas for regulating technology. The foolishness, like so much in Washington, is bipartisan.
During her presidential campaign, Warren called for Great Depression-era antitrust rules, targeting Google, Amazon, and Facebook to sell their marketplace assets, the main way the platforms make money, such as Google Ads, AmazonBasics, and Facebook Ads.
This moral inclination toward breaking up large corporations may seem reasonable at first glance, given the important role that small businesses play in the economy. However, an internet shattered into a million little pieces would not necessarily be a better experience — especially in a state of emergency like the one we’re experiencing right now. There is an obvious utility to having most of your friends and family on free, user-friendly websites such as Google and Facebook. Beyond the ability to connect with others, the two companies have pushed resources to combat coronavirus through homepage links, push notifications, and the like.
On top of that, Big Tech has stepped up to the plate during the crisis in their philanthropic actions. Google has pledged more than $800 million in support to small businesses affected by the virus, including $250 million in ads granted to government agencies and nongovernmental organizations to spread information about the coronavirus and $200 million in direct support to small businesses.
Meanwhile, Facebook has also pledged $100 million to small businesses and $100 million to local news. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey pledged $1 billion of his money, nearly one-third of his net worth, to battling the virus. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Almost every household name tech company is engaging in some philanthropic action to help people during these trying times. The Lincoln Network has compiled a list.
The American tech industry has shown itself to serve our sick nation well during the coronavirus. When this passes, we must not forget that hostile regulations and antitrust actions against the “Big Tech” boogeyman would put our country in a weaker position for the next national crisis.
Casey Given (@CaseyJGiven) is the executive director of Young Voices and a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
