It is very confusing. Bannon is a trip. So is the new director of
communications. They keep switching positions. The only things that remain
stable are their wealth and their self interest.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2017 7:50 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Steve Bannon Wants Facebook and Google Regulated
Like Utilities
Articles like this one leave my head spinning.
Sometimes I feel like an Indian watching the first European ships laying anchor
and coming ashore full of promises and double talk.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/30/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
≡
(c) First Look Media. All rights reservedTerms of use
Steve Bannon Wants Facebook and Google Regulated Like Utilities
Ryan Grim
July 27 2017, 12:31 p.m.
Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. logos are displayed on computer screens
in this arranged photo in New York, U.S., on Monday Jan. 30, 2012. A
Facebook IPO would provide funds to help the social-networking service
maintain its expansion and fend off competition from Internet rivals such as
Google Inc.
and Twitter Inc. Photographer: Peter Foley/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. logos are displayed on computer screens.
Photo: Peter Foley/Bloomberg News/Getty Images
Tech companies like Facebook and Google that have become essential
elements of 21st-century life should be regulated as utilities, top
White House adviser Steve Bannon has argued, according to three people
who’ve spoken to him about the issue.
Bannon’s push for treating essential tech platforms as utilities
pre-dates the Democratic “Better Deal” that was released this week. “Better
Deal,”
the branding for Democrats’ political objectives, included planks
aimed at breaking up monopolies in a variety of sectors, suggesting
that anti-monopoly politics is on the rise on both the right and left.
Bannon’s basic argument, as he has outlined it to people who’ve spoken
with him, is that Facebook and Google have become effectively a
necessity in contemporary life. Indeed, there may be something about
an online social network or a search engine that lends itself to
becoming a natural monopoly, much like a cable company, a water and
sewer system, or a railroad. The sources recounted the conversations
on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give
the accounts on record, and could face repercussions for doing so.
(It’s not Bannon’s only counterintuitive proposal to float this week:
he has also told people close to him he wants to raise the top
marginal tax rate to 44 percent for people who earn more than $5
million per year.)
Regulating a company as a utility does not mean that the government
controls it, but rather that it is much more tightly regulated in what
it is able to do and prices it is able to charge. And it doesn’t mean
every element of the company would be regulated in that way. For
Google - which now calls itself Alphabet and has already conveniently
broken itself up into discrete elements - it may only be the search
function that would be regulated like a utility.
Under the Obama administration, the Federal Communications Commission
moved forward on a plan to regulate internet service providers as
utilities, barring them from slowing down traffic to a site in order
to pressure it into paying higher fees. The Trump administration is
pushing to reverse that move, which complicates Bannon’s message.
Bannon’s argument is bolstered by an unlikely player: Facebook founder
and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. For years, Zuckerberg routinely described
Facebook as a “social utility.” Indeed, it was originally part of the
company’s slogan.
In an interview in 2007 with Time magazine, he was asked to elaborate
on what had become a central talking point.
Time: Why do you describe Facebook as a “social utility” rather than a
“social network”?
Zuckerberg: I think there’s confusion around what the point of social
networks is. A lot of different companies characterized as social
networks have different goals - some serve the function of business
networking, some are media portals. What we’re trying to do is just
make it really efficient for people to communicate, get information
and share information. We always try to emphasize the utility component.
The emphasis on the utility component has disappeared now that
Zuckerberg is surrounded by lawyers well versed in monopoly laws, but
the argument is as resonant today - in fact, more so - than it was a
decade ago.
Tech companies, meanwhile, have feuded publicly with the
administration, particularly over its decision to back out of the
Paris climate accord, a move driven by Bannon.
Silicon Valley’s liberal cultural politics puts it at odds
occasionally with more conservative, rural Trump voters. Facebook was
confronted by a backlash over its news curating during last year’s
presidential campaign.
With insiders claiming there was an anti-conservative bias, Facebook
pulled its live team off the project. Instead, the social media giant
turned its curation over to an algorithm that had little ability to
detect whether an article had been utterly fabricated, giving rise to
the explosive growth of “fake news” (before the moniker morphed into a
description of any news a reader objects to).
Silicon Valley caught on late to the Washington game. In 2011, Sen.
Pat Leahy, D-Vt., then the chairman of the Judiciary Committee,
complained that Google had waited too long to hire an armada of
lobbyists. “Sometimes a company should pay attention early on, not
just when matters happen,” he said. “But I can’t tell them, nor would I, who
they should hire or not.”
Google was playing catch up at the time, and hiring every committee
staffer who wasn’t nailed down. “I consider myself a public works
project right here,” Leahy said of the antitrust investigation he was
leading. “My colleagues call it the Leahy Full Employment Act.”
They have since caught up: In the first few months of the Trump
administration, tech firms set new lobbying spending records in Washington.