From antitrust to censorship, to political bias and privacy, to exploitation and the pornography epidemic, the problem with "Big Tech" is clear—and yet often hard to digest. We collate some of the best perspectives on where to start tackling some of these difficult issues.
In this feature, you’ll read, watch, and listen to a small selection of curated articles, conversations, and exposés on the culture of cancellation and censorship prevalent in the world’s most influential technology monopolies. Broken down into separate sections, we begin by exploring the problem itself in The Power of Big Tech—starting by highlighting our recent podcast episode with expert Will Chamberlain (go give it a listen!).
We also include some policy ideas published in many areas on where some of the brightest minds think we should go from here. Moreover, we offer a selection of “dive deeper” pieces for those who want to get in-the-weeds on the recent Clarence Thomas concurring opinion, as well as explore the damning donor contributions from companies like Facebook and Twitter in IAP’s recent study. Finally, we include a couple of pieces that tackle the pornography epidemic that is so closely intertwined with the issue of Big Tech. Enjoy, and make sure to share these fantastic pieces:
THE POWER OF BIG TECH:
- Podcast | |Taking Tech Titans to Task (feat. Will Chamberlain) | Moment of Truth Ep. 9
- In this episode, Saurabh and guest Will Chamberlain discuss what must be done about big tech, how Clarence Thomas’s epic concurring opinion has expanded the Overton window, why conservatives always lose, and what the state of media is in 2021.
- Article | The Tech Monsters | Tablet Magazine
- Michael Lind explores the Big Tech issue from the perspective of antitrust, writing, “Not all mergers are the same. The ones underpinning our biggest Silicon Valley companies are uniquely bad—and deeply un-American.”
- Article | Amazon’s Digital Bonfire | The American Mind
- Sohrab Ahmari responds to Amazon’s decision to remove Ryan T. Anderson’s 2018 book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment from its store, and the company’s increasing culture of suppression and cancellation.
- Video | Big Tech’s Coordinated Suppression Amounts to a ‘Censorship Cartel’ | Fox News
- Tucker Carlson breaks down troubling political censorship during and after the recent presidential election and exposes collusion on a massive scale from the same companies that purport to foster free and fair platforms for all.
- Article | Don’t Bother Learning to Code | The American Mind
- Pedro Gonzalez explores the nexus of bad immigration policy and the American technology sector, writing that “ruthless outsourcing will be the death of the American Dream.”
WHAT WE DO NEXT:
- Article | For Real American Greatness, A Tech New Deal | The American Mind
- “The new Right should focus energy on offering all Americans a bold and commonsensical Tech New Deal, dedicated to quickly reforming or founding public and private institutions that keep the build and application of digital technologies legally constitutional, American in their view of justice, Western in their values, and uncompromisingly pro-human,” write Ryan P. Williams, Matthew J. Peterson, James Poulos, W. James Antle III, R. R. Reno, J. Arthur Bloom, and Will Chamberlain.
- Article | It’s Time For Conservatives To Take On Big Tech Tyrants. Here’s How | The Federalist
- “If conservatives want to preserve access to the online infrastructure of commerce and speech, they’re going to have to break up Big Tech,” American Moment Board Member Rachel Bovard writes in The Federalist.
- Article | Use Antitrust Against Big Tech | Human Events
- “This market power—combined with these platforms deep, entrenched anti-conservative bias—presents a profound threat to the conservative movement,” writes Will Chamberlain.
- Article | Reform Big Tech In A Way That Helps Small Entrepreneurs | The American Conservative
- “Policy experts agree that opening Big Tech’s infrastructure can level the playing field for the little guy, allowing them a fair shot at competing with even the most prominent firms,” writes Lynn Westmoreland.
DEEP DIVE:
- Article | Read Clarence Thomas’s Roadmap To Reining In Social Media Giants | The Federalist
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“Unprecedented, however, is the concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties.”
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- Podcast | Justice Thomas Big Tech Special | The NatCon Squad
- On Episode 11 of The NatCon Squad, guests Rachel Bovard, Josh Hammer, Emily Jashinsky, and Ben Weingarten discuss Justice Thomas’s Big Tech opinion, and Woke Capital’s “veto” of Georgia’s election law.
- Article | Justice Thomas, Countervailing Power, and Big Tech | American Compass
- “What is key is that Justice Thomas’s judgment points to the fact that there is now widespread agreement that we should not leave the status quo as-is and hope for the best,” writes Marshall Auerback in American Compass.
- Study | 2020 Contributions By Facebook & Twitter Study | Internet Accountability Project
- The Internet Accountability Project released this comprehensive study in 2020 that revealed the true extent to the highly partisan nature of Big Tech’s employees and leadership.
TOPIC SPOTLIGHT: BIG TECH AND THE PORN INDUSTRY
- Article | ‘Patreon For Porn’: The Rise Of OnlyFans | The American Conservative
- “The COVID-friendly online phenom turns females into amateur flesh peddlers and men into desperate voyeurs,” writes Charlie Peters.
- Article | A Science Based Case for Ending the Porn Epidemic | American Greatness
- “We know what porn does to the brain, because the medical science is solid. Because social science is much softer, we can’t know for certain what causal impacts porn has on society, if any. But once we realize that we have to be much more humble in this area, we can still make prudential judgments, writes Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry.
