Here’s a Way We Can Fight Big Tech’s Suffocating Control of Public Discourse
MINOT, N.D. — America’s anti-trust policies are a curious thing.
They consistently allow acquisitive mega-corporations to become even more mega. Facebook bought Instagram. Google bought YouTube. Disney seemingly owns every valuable intellectual property under the sun, from Marvel’s galaxy of superheroes to the stormtroopers and Jedi knights of Star Wars, and Amazon is on pace to own what’s left.
But they also prohibit smaller companies, like the one I work for, from banding together to negotiate content deals with a company like Twitter.
Social media companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, et. al., do not generally produce content. They profit from other people’s content shared willingly, and sometimes unwillingly, on their various platforms. This has been fantastic for the tech titans, who enjoy mountains of profit and far less fantastic for those who produce the content.
The internet revolution drained profits away from traditional media companies using the very content those companies produce. It’s a hell of a thing.
