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IPFS News Link • Intellectual Property

An Argument for Ending Patent Monopolies

• LewRockwell.Com - By Michael S. Rozeff

Google influences the presentation of political information. Among social media platforms, shadowbanning is another way to influence political discourse. A third way is the outright banning of platforms such as that of Alex Jones.

Reporter Allum Bokhari writes "Facebook claims to have boosted voter turnout by 3 percent in 2016 by making small tweaks to their  algorithm. And studies have shown that if search engines like Google manipulated their results to favor particular candidates, they could sway up to 40 percent of undecided voters. The author of the same studies estimates that biased search results shifted between 2 and 3 million votes towards Hillary Clinton in 2016. How much more could they shift in 2020?"

Although this quote from Bokhari is convenient for me to cite, I do not accept most of what he says in understanding the problem or as solutions.  

Bokhari favors government regulation of social media giants. I strongly oppose it, because it means the government will control political speech, a horrible totalitarian outcome.

Bokhari uses the common carrier rationale, for one rationale. This certainly does not apply, because entry is in many ways open (within the patent limitations noted below). He suggests that "alternative distribution channels" do not "help people who are just starting now, at a time when exclusion from social media is increasingly tantamount to exclusion from the public square." I think Bokhari vastly under-estimates the capacity of start-ups to gain acceptance, and he implicitly fails entirely to grasp the vitality of the venture capital market to finance such start-ups. He also doesn't realize that if a media giant, such as Facebook, exhibits enough bias such that it loses customers and loses market value, shareholder efforts will arise to alter the company's leadership and take it over. Boards of Directors and outside holders of the voting shares are not passive.

I do not accept the Supreme Court's idea that social media are the "modern public square", which Bokhari also accepts. That notion confuses private and public. That concept treats discourse as a static entity produced by existing institutions. We need not accept that assumption. There are all sorts of dynamics to make political discourse wide open. New social media companies can enter the market. Voters can learn what platforms are biased and act accordingly to adjust what they think and how they vote. Platforms are open to criticism by candidates and others. Furthermore, votes are influenced in ways beyond calculation.


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