 Censorship by proxy is something that's been used recently, where the idea is that maybe what these private companies are doing is not censorship, but they're doing it under the influence of government. That is, the government is plotting them to do it. They can't pass a law. Is that then censorship? Yes, I think it is. And I think that is a real worry here. But I'm usually not sympathetic to the people raising this, and we can talk about why. But I think it is a real worry here. It's my reading of Facebook, of what's happened with Facebook. And when you look at Zuckerberg's history, and what he said in responses to calls that, oh, the Facebook shouldn't allow this on their platform and so on. I think he started off much more as, no, we believe in a lot of robust speech. People are going to disagree. And yeah, we're not going to have criminal things on our site. But we're going to have things that people don't like on our site. And you can see a movement towards, then I think in March 2019, he writes an op-ed about, oh yeah, government should regulate us. And that's a change, I think, and it's coming, or at least there's strong reason to think it's coming in part from government intimidation. Yeah, I mean, I think it's self-defense. He knows government is going to regulate them. So you might as well get ahead of the curve in a sense of defining what those regulations look like, and not making sure that the regulations are not so harmful to your business. It's sad that they have to do this. Yeah. And I think here the issue of antitrust is important because I read again Zuckerberg's email, I mean, sorry, op-ed where he's saying, well, we need his regulation. And he suggests some things and says, like this is likely not everything, but this is a start and so on. The antitrust is one of the most non-objective areas of law. I mean, this is a point I ran stressed that you're basically guilty if you're in business under antitrust, like you could be prosecuted under the antitrust laws if you're in business, because there's all kinds of contradictory, vague, arbitrary things in the antitrust laws. So you could see in a context where they're starting to talk about, like, yeah, maybe Facebook's too big and we should use antitrust to break it up. And should we really have allowed them to buy Instagram and think it's, you can't, there is no defense in that. So that you would as think of a solution, like if we could get some better that it wasn't so totally non-objective regulation where we could say, look, we're actually complying, like, what's your problem? Ask different regulations and so on if you want something different, but don't come threatening us every month saying, look, if you don't do something, we're going to break you up or do some damage to your company, it would be more clear cut what the regulation is. And if, I mean, if you're faced with this kind of antitrust intimidation, I can see that as a, this is a way out is like, let's pass some regulation that I can actually meet. Now there might be an anti competitive element to it. I mean, this is part of the tragedy when you get government involved like this. It is true, I mean, you know this, that the bigger companies can deal with regulation. So there is a phenomenon of when companies get big, they ask for regulation of the industry, knowing that that will make it harder for startups to compete because they can't comply. I mean, the compliance costs with regulation or I mean, the better terms of government controls are high. But I don't, I mean, that's not my read of the primary thing going on with Zuckerberg. No, I don't think so either. I mean, there's no, and, and I mean, the whole antitrust thing is so ludicrous. There's so many different social media platforms right now. I just got invited to a new one two days ago called Clubhouse, never heard of it. But all the Silicon Valley people on Clubhouse and it's, it's, it's more based on verbal discussion, not video, not writing, but just, just people talking and every, you know, they keep popping up. I mean, new ones keep coming up. So the whole idea that there's some monopoly here or, or dominance is, is ludicrous, but it's used as because it's so non objective, because there are no standards. It's used as a way to put pressure on these companies to do what the government wants it to do. And in that sense, to the extent that it causes them to silence themselves or to silence others, that's the sense in which it's proxy by its censorship by proxy. Yeah, and I'd be more sympathetic if the first time these companies were hauled before Congress, and it's, you have Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, and you have, Google sometimes didn't show up at Google and Apple. And when they're being hauled before Congress, and it's, it really is a show trial of what is going on. If people at that time had said, so this is a violation of these companies' rights, this is a violation of freedom of speech, you're trying to get them to take actions against speech and content that you happen not to like. And it was, I mean, it's both sides of the aisle in Congress were that going out of the way to have sound bites and say, look how tough we were on Zuckerberg or on Dorsey. And they're exercising their rights. And here it's the government threatening them. And if at that point, including like some of their smaller competitors saying, like if, if, if Parler say was defending Facebook at that time, I'd be more sympathetic to or, or in the, I mean, they went after Amazon for antitrust, certainly Trump was saying, if companies at that point had said, look, this is a, this is really wrong. You should be, they're not monopolies. They're just good. And, and when you start telling them this is how they have to make content decisions, this is a violation of freedom of speech. I'd be more sympathetic than now when it's the, it's, they don't like what's happened to them now that they, it would be, look, we were trying to defend freedom of speech and defend these companies. But if you sort of look the other way or, or happy when Congress goes after these companies, because you think of them as monopolies or be a myth. So whatever. And then it's, you want to turn around and say, no, you shouldn't do this. I don't have sympathy for that. Yeah. I mean, I agree. It's, it's, and nobody spoke up because I did. So I know I was the only one nobody spoke up the Institute spoke up. But other than objectivists, you really got nothing that conservatives didn't, many of the libertarians either remain quiet or just, it's not an issue that, you know, they hate big, right? So if it's, I think I'm into attacking big tech, that's fine. As long as we can, as long as we get away. So nobody really stood up and you're right, certainly the companies competing with these companies didn't stand up. And then when they, when they get in trouble, suddenly free speech is a big issue. Why wasn't free speech an issue at that point? Yeah, because if you think of even, so if you think of Facebook, Twitter, taking down Trump's things, but if you think even of Amazon, the web service, taking Parler off, you can wonder, like, is it partly because of the intimidation and threats they're facing from government that it's, look, we can use antitrust against you, Amazon too. And if you're allowing this kind of content and it helped people storm the Capitol and so like, you better worry about this. And it, I mean, it might be a safe force of action for them to say, okay, we're not going to host. I mean, it's not going to impact Amazon's bottom line very much that they don't have this one. And it might be, yeah, if this gets us on the good side of the antitrust busters, maybe we do it. So who do you blame in that circumstances? Because everybody's blaming Amazon. It's the one thing you don't blame. I blame everybody that it's the everybody who didn't speak up when this started happening. And it goes back at least. I mean, I do think I think you have that same view that a pivotal moment here was Microsoft and the Justice Department and that. And if the business world and particularly the tech world doesn't speak up in defense of Microsoft and say, this is outrageous. Yeah, even though it has 90% market share and so on, it's not a monopoly. It hasn't forced us to do it. It's just hard to compete with Microsoft. And if you that was the beginning, I think of government scene, yeah, we can get our hands on tech in a way that they were much more separate before that. And if certainly people in the tech world, but just more generally, people who are pro freedom, if they didn't speak up, this is a seminal issue. And if it goes badly, it's going to have long term consequences. So I mean, the idea that you blame Microsoft or Amazon or Apple, it's the last people to blame. Yeah, I mean, it's stunning because during the Microsoft case, like two so-called libertarian CEOs in Silicon Valley, one supported the government and one just stayed quiet, which was Sam McNeely at Sun, actually who was in the board of Cato at the time. He supported the government in going after Microsoft. And Larry Ellison at Oracle just, I think, stayed quiet and they didn't speak up. And partially, I can understand it because they were probably afraid that they would go after them next. But yeah, I mean, that fear, this is what you get. You get government more and more influential in tech business. And then tech companies do stuff in order to try to appease government because they have no choice because the alternative is that they get crushed and they know that and then people blame the yeah, it drives me nuts. I mean, I can understand blaming the government for being in that position. And as you say, the companies who didn't stand up to defend them, but to blame Amazon for it. And I'm not even talking about the parlor case where the Amazon warned parlor over and over again, supposedly, at least according to the judge who did not give parlor the they're not ruling their favor for an injunction. The court, you know, they haven't had the trial yet, but at least an injunction, he said, look, Amazon warned you, you didn't live you didn't you didn't live up to your agreement with Amazon. So let's talk a little bit about these tech companies. And so we've got we've got so so we got Twitter, we got Facebook, we got parlor, we got all these all these entities when they restrict somebody from posting, like they restricted Donald Trump. And I, you know, the first, it's interesting how people think about these issues, right? The first thing that came to my mind when Twitter restricted Donald Trump's speech was, and I think I tweeted this, was, I'm so happy I live in a country where a private company can, you know, ban the president from using his platform. I mean, that to me was just whether you agree with Twitter's decision or not. The ability to do that was like, yes, this is fantastic. What a what a great, you know, because you can do that in China and Tokyo and my guess is, in a lot of countries, I mean, I wonder if in Israel, you could, you could say Prime Minister, you can't post anything. My guess is the answer is no. So we still live in a country where there is that. So first of all, what do we call that if it's not censorship? I mean, the one of the terms that you use is the platform. I think if you understand what that term means, it's the right term. It's we've built the platform. We decide who uses it and not. And if you're meeting or either sort of formal terms of services or informally, the like the reason we created this and we want to create something of value and so on. And keep in mind like Trump was on these platforms for a long, long time. So, but it's after January 6th, if it's even so you might think there's government pressure for them to do this. And again, they had to go. But even if they're even if so, let's just say for the sake of argument, it was for Twitter, Jack Dorsey, after January 6th, it was, yeah, this is too much. I don't want to be part of this anymore. And even if Trump's not legally guilty of incitement, it's from a moral point of view, this was inciting a crowd. And I don't want to give this person a platform anymore. Yeah, I agree completely with your reaction that it's great to live in a country where that is possible. And notice even the European Union, I think Merkel and others, it was like really a company can do this. And that's the I mean, I ran pointed out many times about Europe, their statism is much more ingrained that like doesn't government have absolute power sort of and then we claw we get some permissions and claw it back a bit. But it's that reaction really government private company can kick off the president and the president can't just say, no, I'm nationalizing your company or whatever. And yeah, I agree with you completely, it's to live in a place where that's possible. It's that is so rare historically. It's so rare now. And it's what freedom, it's part of what freedom means. What we need today, what I called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations, any man or woman who values his life, and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist growth. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now. 30 likes. That should be at least 100. 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