Getting Over Big Tech

We are never ever ever getting back together!

(This column originally ran as part of a special August 2022 print issue of The Mallard edited by my friend Raheem Kassam. You can purchase that issue here.)

It’s hard to believe now, but there was a recent, pre-Trump time when the Republican Party was engaged in a desperately one-sided love affair with Big Tech. It’s probably not even accurate to call it a relationship – it was barely glorified simping. At seemingly every opportunity, conservative leaders would go out of their way to express their undying devotion and admiration for companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon. Republicans would proudly show off their Apple bling, hoping to win over the votes and campaign contributions of the Silicon Valley tech bros. 

At perhaps its lowest and most pitiable point, the Party of Lincoln even made a serious attempt to brand itself as the “Party of Uber,” invoking the name of the infamous rideshare taxi company that can’t seem to make its shareholders a profit or pay its workers a decent wage. GOP candidates wrote books with glowing sections portraying Uber’s greatness as a vindication of the Republican pro-growth economic vision. 

The Republican National Committee ran petitions decrying the unions, the government bureaucrats, and – let’s be honest – those pesky sub-minimum wage workers who stood in the way of technological progress. Even Jeb Bush got in on the Uber shilling when he called a press conference to tell reporters all about the Uber ride he had just taken. These guys were totally committed.

Frankly, it was all a little over the top. And to make matters worse, none of these romantic gestures seemed to faze Big Tech. According to Business Insider, more than 90 percent of all campaign contributions between 2004-2018 from staff at Big Tech companies went to the Democrats. That number only got worse in 2020. The Internet Accountability Project found that Facebook and Twitter PACs and staff contributed more than 12 times as much to Democrats ($5.5 million) as Republicans ($435,000). 

In what can only be described as a cautionary tale of unrequited love, the GOP kept trying to make it work. Baby, come back! We’re the party of disrupters, the creative destroyers, the badasses in bow ties who want to help Silicon Valley remake the economy and exercise ever more control over American life. Baby, please don’t go! 

Alas – Big Tech just wasn’t that into the GOP. And after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the Republican Party got dumped in a very public way.

As Facebook, Google, and Twitter grew to enjoy immense size, wealth and ubiquity, they also quietly began to suppress political and social viewpoints with which they disagreed. The censorship crusade began with the silencing of unpopular, heterodox voices that few in the mainstream were willing to defend: the so-called “alt-right provocateurs” and “conspiracy theorists.” Republicans mostly tolerated this censorship out of fear of associating with the wrong crowd. 

This weakness only helped to serve Big Tech’s argument that some people shouldn’t be allowed to speak online in the digital public square. Soon after, the same justifications that were used to silence those “deplorables” were weaponized to silence more mainstream voices, including Republican candidates, elected officials, political organizations, and super PACs. Only then – once it became apparent that Big Tech was actively interfering in an election – did the Republican Party finally rouse from its previous love drunk slumber.

I’m afraid we woke up too late. 

Big Tech’s censorship had its desired effect: by censoring conservative candidates, opinions, books, apps, websites, advocacy groups, news stories, and political advertisements – and even censoring groundbreaking journalism in the Hunter Biden exposé – Big Tech was able to swing the results of the 2020 election. Joe Biden, who only won by a combined 44,000 vote margin in three states, was selected President of the United States by the most powerful companies in the world.

To state the obvious: Big Tech companies clearly and obviously pose an existential threat to democracy. The danger goes well beyond free speech. While Big Tech-funded lackeys in Washington, D.C. insist that “private companies can do whatever they want,” Republicans must come to terms with the fact that we will have to rein in Big Tech if we want to secure the American people’s right to self-government. We cannot allow “global citizen” oligarchs to simply flip a content moderation switch and change the results of an election.

Fortunately, most Republicans seem to have enough self-respect to adapt to this new reality. In order to protect free and fair elections, state action is required. And that’s going to take a shift in political outlook. Conservative ideologues often muse about making government so small that it can be drowned in a bathtub – always a funny line – but what if the alternative is that Facebook and Google grow so powerful that they can drown us in the bathtub?  

Republicans are likely to take back both the House and Senate in November. While the GOP still has to deal with the Dementia-Patient-in-Chief in the White House, it certainly has the opportunity to put immediate pressure on the Big Tech companies by implementing a pro-free speech agenda, setting the stage for these bills to become law with a Republican president in 2025. Some options that are being seriously considered include:

Section 230 Reform

In 1996, Congress decided to pass Section 230 to grant “interactive computer services” total immunity from civil liability for user-generated content on their platforms. The law’s original intent was to grant these platforms the ability to remove obscene content, while still offering a “forum for a true diversity of political discourse … and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.” 

In other words, this was supposed to be a trade-off. Tech platforms would be protected from users suing them over content, and in return, the platforms would provide a digital version of the public square – one that promotes First Amendment principles like free speech. 

But that’s obviously not how this played out. Now Big Tech companies use this law as a carte blanche justification to remove any content at any time for any reason – including to help their political allies and hurt their political opponents. This is the legal foundation upon which Big Tech is built. 

But Section 230 is merely a law. Congress passed it. Congress can amend it, too. Republicans are considering a reform that would require market-dominant Big Tech platforms to adhere to a First Amendment standard in order to “earn” their Section 230 immunity from civil liability – meaning that any speech that would be allowed on a public sidewalk would have to be allowed on Facebook and Twitter. Look for Republicans to pass this bill in the new Congress in 2023.

Antitrust

If there were 20 Facebooks or 20 Googles, the companies would be forced to compete with each other and provide users with a better experience. Then, if one company censored aggressively, another could compete by offering a First Amendment standard. Solving fair competition would likely help restore free speech online.

Republicans have certainly talked a lot about “breaking up” Big Tech, but some elected officials have offered specific proposals. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) has introduced a bill called the Open Apps Market Act which would go after anti-competitive practices in the app store market. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has also introduced a bill called the Competition and Transparency in Online Advertising Act that addresses unfairness in the discrete online ads market. Passing these types of bills in the next Congress should help address the unprecedented market dominance of these companies – and also show Big Tech that Republicans mean business and aren’t willing to put up with systemic online censorship.

A Select Committee on Big Tech Censorship

One thing that Republicans can do immediately even with Joe Biden still in office is to use the subpoena power of Congress to make life difficult for the Big Tech oligarchs. The Democrats certainly showed us this is fair game with their sham January 6th committee. Why not play the same game? Donald Trump specifically suggested that Republicans should create a select committee to investigate Big Tech’s 2020 election interference – a great idea!

Ultimately, the GOP and Big Tech are done. We are never ever ever getting back together. But if the GOP wants to encourage the Big Tech companies to stop interfering in our elections and allow us to speak freely online in the digital public square, then it is going to have to get comfortable with Congress asserting its constitutional authority to pass laws. Time to show some intestinal fortitude. 

Jon Schweppe is the policy director at American Principles Project. He is the founder of BigTechFunding.org and a co-author of a groundbreaking report detailing Big Tech's outsized impact on the 2020 election: "Big Tech vs. Democracy." Follow him on Twitter: @JonSchweppe.