In a new Cato Policy Report, tech analyst Drew Clark lays out the ways in which government regulation often bites the ass that got it started in the first place. He notes that for much of the past several decades, "Silicon Valley"—that rough descriptor of tech and internet-based companies—was both the poster child for dynamic, forward-looking American capitalism, and largely unregulated by the federal government, especially compared to more traditional industries.

But all good things have got to end, and Clark documents how Washington started to take an interest in West Coast tech. Ironically, it was Silicon Valley who came a-calling first, "in the 1990s with the antitrust case against Microsoft, and again more recently in the battle with internet service providers over net neutrality." In each case, he notes, the alarm was sounded by other tech sector people and now, "they entangled the federal government in their industry in ways that are coming back to haunt them."

Clark writes that "net neutrality" rules were aimed at telecom firms (especially cable companies providing internet access) and promulgated and pushed by online bandwidth hogs including Netflix, Google, eBay, and Amazon. It was all good to start regulating the internet as long as it was the pipes being regulated and not what flowed through them (indeed, the rallying cry of net neutrality was that all data should be treated equally!). But that's not the way it played out. The Open Internet Order of 2015 has been rescinded (that's a good thing, incidentally) and now Washington is far more concerned with what's being transmitted rather than what ISP is transmitting it or at what speed it's being sent:

Silicon Valley's regulations-for-thee-but-not-for-me attitude has come back to bite them. They want the strictest form of regulation for telecommunications providers but no scrutiny of themselves, and now the tables have been turned.

[Federal Communications Chairman Ajit] Pai has not hesitated to point out the hypocrisy as he has moved to undo the net neutrality rules. In a November 29 speech in the lead-up to his net neutrality rollback, he said that the tech giants are "part of the problem" of viewpoint discrimination. "Indeed, despite all the talk about the fear that broadband providers could decide what internet content consumers can see, recent experience shows that so-called edge providers are in fact deciding what content they see. These providers routinely block or discriminate against content they don't like."

As examples, Pai cited Twitter's blocking Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) from advertising her Senate campaign with a message about partial-birth abortion, Apple's blocking an app for cigar aficionados, Google–YouTube's demonetizing videos from conservative commentator Dennis Prager and his "Prager University," plus "algorithms that decide what content you see (or don't), but aren't disclosed themselves" and "online platforms secretly editing certain users' comments." Others have termed the need for clarity about algorithms as a form of "search neutrality." The next day, for good measure, Pai blasted Facebook and Twitter for contributing to the rise of incivility in public discourse and "the breakdown in human interaction."