Break Them Up!

Why We Need Government to Rein in Big Tech: Interview with Matt Stoller

For this week’s Liminal News podcast, I interview Matt Stoller, a prominent researcher and advocate of antitrust law. Stoller writes BIG, a must-read Substack newsletter, and is a fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), a nonprofit think tank. Stoller explores how monopolies in the tech industry distort markets, suppress competition, and concentrate power, becoming like governing bodies in themselves but with no oversight. Stoller’s views are informed by his study of the deep history of antitrust law and economic populism, which we explore in our interview. In this dialogue, he links the unchecked growth of tech giants to a deep erosion of trust in government and loss of their ability to regulate and restrain corporate power.

Recently, I’ve been exploring why many formerly Leftist and Left-ish influencers (Russell Brand, RFK, Charles Eisenstein, Matt Taibbi, Naomi Wolf, and so on) swerved heinously to the Right in recent years. I’ve looked at the issue of “sovereignty” — bodily autonomy — which became a rallying cry during the Covid pandemic, as certain populations resisted the lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Among the alternative spiritual community, many refused to take the vaccines as dark, conspiratorial theories swirled around them.

Another related reason for the hard swerve to the Right centers on the cherished ideal of “free speech.” Free speech — said to be protected by the holy First Amendment — has become a cultural battleground. A number of influencers — Elon Musk among them — take a simple view of it: Free speech is an Absolute Right that must be protected at all costs. As Stoller unpacks in what follows, this is an ideological perspective that runs counter to the authentic history of American civic discourse.

I feel confused by the current kerfuffle around free speech issues. Generally, I find, if I am confused about a subject, other people probably are, as well. I started to track a number of legal cases and news stories related to “big tech” and free speech. This includes the recent arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France, on the grounds that he is responsible for crimes committed via the messaging app, which he designed so that people’s communications are encrypted and inaccessible to the company itself as well as government agencies. Glenn Greenwald, among others, has argued that Durov is innocent, and his decision to not allow a “back door” for government to access messages is a principled one. But is that really the case?

A recent landmark decision found TikTok liable in the death of Nylah Anderson, a ten-year-old girl who asphyxiated herself while participating in the “Black Out Challenge” promoted by the platform. As Stoller writes in BIG, this ruling threatens to “upend the business model of the big tech firms,” as it contradicts the key provision of Section 230, a hastily written law that gave tech companies a way to evade consequences of harm caused by their platforms:

TikTok knew that such videos were causing kids to get into tragic accidents, and yet had its algorithm target children nonetheless. Anderson’s family sued under Pennsylvania state law for product liability, negligence, and wrongful death. The lower district court dismissed the claim, ruling that TikTok isn’t responsible, because TikTok was merely hosting the speech of others, not making the speech itself.

The part of the code governing this conduct is… Section 230, a law passed in 1996… The law says that if an ‘interactive computer service’ hosts the speech of someone else, it is not liable for that speech, but is only liable for its own speech. It also gave services the right to filter without liability. A platform is not liable for “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.”

In Mark Zuckerberg’s recent letter to the House Judiciary Committee, he reflected on how the Biden administration “repeatedly pressured” Meta to censor content during the pandemic, including satire and humorous posts about COVID-19. He expressed regret over yielding to these requests, stating, “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.”

Zuckerberg also mentioned Meta’s decision to suppress The New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden during the 2020 election, acknowledging that, in hindsight, they should not have demoted the story based on fears of Russian disinformation. Instead of revealing the government’s power over Meta, the letter could be seen as showing Zuckerberg’s incredible power, beyond government controls.