David A. Windham thumbnail

Illiberalism

Online Platforms and Market Power

I watched the entire House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust because I was curious as what the heads of Apple, Facebook, Amazon, & Google would have to say regarding some of their practices. I read some of the accompanying documentation from the House1. It is fascinating watching folks like that operate under the microscope while trying to be gracious to one another. If anything, the some of the members of the subcommittee appeared to be idiots with questions about why their campaign emails landed in spam. My primary takeaway was that it was only slightly more productive than blindly scrolling Reddit and a decent way to entertain myself. If you want the lowdown, here’s the summary from Politico2. 

Personally, I’m a bit skeptical of the big four. It started when a project I was working on received a cease and desist letter from Facebook for using the term ‘friend’ as a way to describe a relationship between two user accounts. Ever since then, I’ve just kinda laughed to myself about some of their more aggressive tactics. The term ‘it’s just business’ has always had an odd ring to it, especially since it’s origins are in the mob3. I’m not big brother skeptical, but I can see some obvious faults.  I don’t entirely blame them though, part of the blame lies with the consumers. Every time a question was asked about tactics to compete like copying apps, watching the data on competitors, or changing pricing schemes the response I had in my mind was just ‘duh’! 

Richard Pryor - Duh!

Aside from the typical GOP volleys about why various fringe conservative publications being censored, I think the biggest gaff of the afternoon was Bezos calling ‘social media a nuance destruction machine’. Easy for him to say, even though everyone knows the reviews on Amazon could easily qualify with the same sort of disinformation campaigns lobbied more commonly at the other ‘social media platforms’. He was responding to a question about the idea of cancel culture4.  Again, I prefer to see this as a human behavioral fault that’s only been exemplified by modern communications. Instead of the lobbied accusation of electioneering, I see it more akin to manufacturing consent5 and the inherit ‘distractioneering’6 techniques commonly involved in online platforms. I found most of this dialogue relatively normative.

The one quote that really stood out with me was from Mark Zuckerberg. He said “I am very worried about some of the forces of illiberalism I see in this country that are pushing against free expression.” I’m writing this essay because I had to do a deep dive on the word illiberalism this morning.  The definition is pretty straight forward meaning the opposition to or lack of liberalism, narrow-minded , intolerant, unenlightened, or bigoted.  As much as it’s easy to assume the meaning, I’m not that well educated on how it’s being used in politics and government7. I did find the word illiberalism tossed about in a bunch of various headlines recently8,9 mainly revolving around the idea of free speech. One Congressman tossed out a reference during the hearings directly citing the resignation letter of former writer for the New York Times10. 

I put a bit of though into it this morning and I’m leaning towards my prior decrees in that the primary issue surrounding this is our new communication methodologies and our social psychology.  Only the most passionate opinions surfaced when you had to actually compile more than 40 characters into an editorial letter to a regional publisher to even have the slight possibility to have your opinion heard by a much wider audience. These platforms give voices to the most obscure and make it very easy to silo and amplify opinion which would otherwise be disregarded. Somehow the idea that it’s been published online is giving these platforms credence. Ironically, some of the most vocal folks I know are conservative in their views.  My former roommate has a good bit of social pull because he runs an online website. I like to call it a smut rag, because it’s essentially preying on the same sort of psychological weaknesses that make folks gossip about one another at the water cooler just on a regional scale. This is akin to the ‘shock jock’11 radio effect of tune in even if you don’t agree or the crass ‘your suburbs are going to be destroyed’ emotional wedge issues12 in clickbait headlines which just highlight our own psychological weakness towards shockvertising13. 

Are we sliding towards illiberalism? Did ole’ Zuck have a legitimate worry? I’d agree, but I wouldn’t pin the blame on Facebook, Google, or Twitter. I’d pin in on the fact that the most vocal folks online tend to be the most opinionated and crass. The one’s who’ve managed to gain the largest audiences did so by being exactly this way. It’s a media cult of personality sort of thing. In my opinion, it’s very much the same type of personality that become politicians. Other’s have said it, but I’ll refer to Douglas Adams on that topic. “It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”14 And there they were complaining to some of the most powerful CEOs in the world that their campaign emails aren’t being delivered to their relatives.  

I believe that the solution lies in the fact that moderate voices, the meek, the humble-minded, and bland opinions don’t stand out online. They’re just not as largely represented because of the basic formulations of follow, friend, share, tweet counts, search engine ranking, etc in the attention economy15. It’s not the fault of big tech if you get shot down by a mob trying to promote an unpopular opinion. If you’re in politics, you signed up for just that game.  Although the internet has proven a boon for fringe minded extremist views because of its relative anonymity, cancel culture has been around much longer and our tech titans have just become the target of ire in a tinderbox situation. I do however, believe that the technology ‘platforms’ should have the same legal responsibility towards slander, copyright, threats of violence, assault, fraud, deceit, and our protected free speech. I was in the publishing business when Section 23016 first granted online publications the legal shield of user generated content and I expect to see it in the headlines for years to come. I support that section and I think that it’s directly responsible for the very existence of social networks. A bunch of politicians wagging fingers at a bunch of technology CEOs isn’t going to help anything.  There are behemoths because we made them so. You have the freedom to not use them and I have been a big proponent of not doing so.  Although some of the consequences have been very real and distressing, I’m guessing that we’ll look back on this in twenty years and cringe at how much it took our attention.  

If you don’t like seeing other folks opinions online, then just don’t participate. That’s the ultimate form of cancel culture. It’s pretty easy to cancel any of these technologies, publishers, and politicians from your life. I told me wife recently that my goal is to have a life where my only real concern is the weather. However, It should be pretty obvious I’m not there yet given the hour I just spent publishing another opinion into the internet void while I could have been making something, getting some work done, or mowing the lawn. 

  1. Online Platforms and Market Power – https://judiciary.house.gov/online-platforms-and-market-power/
  2. Theft, Censorship, and the Emperors of the Online Economy – https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/29/tech-antitrust-hearing-live-highlights-and-updates-380487
  3. Nothing personal, it’s just business – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Berman
  4. Cancel culture – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture
  5. Manufacturing Consent – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
  6. Attention marketing – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_marketing
  7. Illiberal democracy – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illiberal_democracy
  8. Tom Cotton and the Elite Media’s Dalliance With Illiberalism – https://newrepublic.com/article/158081/tom-cotton-totalitarian-chic
  9. Illiberalism Isn’t to Blame for the Death of Good-Faith Debate – https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/illiberalism-cancel-culture-free-speech-internet-ugh.html
  10. The Illiberal Liberal Media – https://www.city-journal.org/bari-weiss-new-york-times
  11. Shock jock – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_jock
  12. Wedge issues – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_issue
  13. Shockvertising – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_value
  14. Douglas Adams The Restaurant at the End of the Universe – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Restaurant_at_the_End_of_the_Universe
  15. Attention economy – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy
  16. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act