Democrats are fawning over Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s call for “new rules” to regulate internet companies like his — and that should worry every freedom-loving American.
Don’t be fooled. This is not some humbled executive begrudgingly accepting that his industry needs regulation. This is one of the richest men on earth inviting the American government to help him do what he already wants to do anyway.
Let’s be perfectly clear: Every single regulatory measure Zuckerberg is calling for would benefit his company, his political allies, and himself personally. At best, regulation would just deflect from the unsavory practices of Facebook and its competitors; at worst, it would enlist government sponsorship for those practices.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner greeted Zuckerberg’s announcement by saying he was “glad to see” that “the era of the social media Wild West is over.”
Of course, when Warner refers to the “social media Wild West,” he’s not talking about tech giants routinely censoring and shadow-banning conservatives, banning memes that lampoon their journalist friends, and blatantly discriminating against Republican candidates during election campaigns.
No, Warner means the Wild West of relatively unbridled free speech that allowed millions of Americans to crack the consensus forged by the political establishment of both parties in 2016.
When he says “the Wild West is over,” Warner means just what Google’s CFO meant when he promised to “use the great strength and resources and reach we have to continue to advance really important values,” just days after President Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.
Those on the left are determined to prevent a repeat of the 2016 presidential election, which is why they are so adamantly pushing for more censorship online. It’s just their luck that they have a potential ally in Zuckerberg, a man who would love to throw this hands up and say, “Hey, the government handles that.”
In his Washington…
