Dtjytyk

I'm over in the UK with quite an interest in US politics, and intrigued at Republican statements about tech and social media being biased against them.

My curiosity is piqued because on the other hand, every time there's any discussion about regulating industries, the response of the same people seems to be almost always that free markets should be left to self regulate and not imposed on - essentially "it's usually wrong to interfere and let the pain fall where it will - the market will address it if it gets too out of hand", or something like that.

Granted that's not an absolute - there are strong laws against many things - but why is it seen as okay that markets should self regulate, and then be upset when they don't self regulate as the speaker would wish?

Surely the free market response enshrined in the Republican/Conservative perspective is squarely based on the principle that ideas compete, social medias compete, and the solution is to be better and more successful than those one objects to, not bemoan their successful stakes achieved by innovation and effort in a lawful and competitive manner in the open market?

And if some ideas/products get less airtime, popular usage/support, or are less effective at penetrating, or the "other side" picked them up quicker and ran with them better, then that's their lookout (essentially "no social support for the losers, and no tax funds to prop them up either").

From here it feels like it may be a bit inconsistent - ("Everyone should follow these rules unless I and mine don't like them, in which case they should be different").

I'd be interested to hear especially Conservative perspectives on it.

(Please forgive any ignorance about the subtleties of the various Conservative positions, if any!)

I think the misunderstanding comes from how conservatives complain about bias in media and tech. Conservatives often don't call for government action, they just want to shed light on the injustices. For example:

“Some of us tell the truth about our government, they call us treasonous and say we’re speaking out of line and they’d like to punish us, and I think that’s part of what’s happening with social media,” [Ron] Paul told RT, adding that he hopes anti-government or anti-war voices can eliminate their “dependency” on the current social media platforms.

“I’m just hoping that technology can stay ahead of it all and that we
can have real alternatives to the dependency on Twitter and other
companies that have been working hand in glove with the government,”
Paul added.

Ron Paul doesn't call for the government to solve the problem. He says the companies are acting like a corrupt government and calls for people to use alternatives. Republicans want to bring the misbehavior to light so people will be outraged and shy away from them. Then the companies will have to choose between fixing their problem or losing money. That's the free-market solution to companies behaving badly.

The other free-market friendly intervention would be to prosecute fraud. One example comes from the libertarain party of texas platform "The force of government must be used only in response to an attack, fraud, or other initiation of force against an individual, group or government by another individual, group or government." If Google says they're a neutral platform, but actually have algorithms designed to make sure no one can find conservative content, that's fraud. Most free-enterprise folks still think there's a strong role for government in forcing the perpetrator of fraud to pay damages or serve prison time.

In cases where Republicans call for government regulation of speech to protect them from the big bad liberal media, this might be a function of not all conservatives sharing the same free-market/libertarian ideas about what the government should and shouldn't do. Many conservatives in the "religious right" would love to see free speech regulated better. One example comes from them wanting to protect their children from pornography. They'd be happy to restrict public access to certain speech and content, despite it reducing freedom, because they think too much of certain kinds of freedom is destructive to a moral society. This idea of conservatism as preserving cultural norms can be radically different from the libertarian, maximum-freedom philosophy.

It probably depends on what circle of 'conservatives' you're talking to, but the most legitimate complaint I see get thrown around, is that big tech companies should be forced to abide by one of the two legal frameworks that they currently only take the best parts from.

Either they are a platform, in which case they shouldn't be censoring anything not explicitly illegal.

OR

They are publishers, and liable for every single bit of libel/slander that pops up in their content. Which would almost certainly lead to requiring curation by an editor of all content before it's visible, or lead to an immediate end to those tech companies via lawsuits.

It isn't that they dislike how the game of 'free markets' play out, it's that from their perspective, one side is cheating, and openly at that.

So I'm on the libertarian side with some leftist and some rightist reservations, so I am not a conservative, but I think there are a few points to be made.

First, expressing dislike about how the market ends up going isn't inherently anti-free market. Many people who are conservative/libertarian will criticize companies for what they do, but not call for regulation. Not liking something because it doesn't fit your needs is not anti-free market. For example, I would be sad if Dunkin Donuts went out of business, and complain a lot, but as long as I didn't try to enact laws that subsidized them/taxed Honey Dew, I wouldn't violate my principles of being a free marketer. We can see Sen Mike Lee do that in a Senate Sub-committee here, where he accuses them of bias, and clearly doesn't like them, but doesn't want to regulate them as a utility.

Second, we have competing freedoms, that of speech and trade. Libertarians and conservatives value both free markets and free speech. Here they come into conflict. An extreme example of freedoms conflicting would be slavery, which we roundly reject as one's personal liberty trumps free trade. We do like free markets, but this comes from respecting individual liberty, including the individual liberty to trade. So you should be free to trade, just not in a manner that restricts other's freedom*.

So the question is if social media censorship is limiting people's rights. In America, we have one of the strongest free speech rights that exists. It allows one to say hateful, factually wrong things* without liable in most cases. Before social media, people who had ideas others would like to censor (the Wobblies come to mind) would stand on soapboxes in the public square, and no one could (legally and constitutionally) stop them.

But now people protest and raise awareness through Twitter and Facebook and other social media, which have supplanted and expanded the public forum. But Twitter and Facebook, despite being American Companies who have American customers, censor speech without regard to the first amendment. Yes, legally speaking, they are not a government so the first amendment doesn't apply to them, but the way they are engaging in trade limits people's freedom of speech.

_{*: With some small limits, but much smaller than you would expect. For example, hate speech doesn't legally exist in America and is protected by the first amendment. Also, much of what would be libel/slander in the UK is fine in the US, though there still some limits.}

There seems to be a mistaken assumption here that Republicans are one strand of ideology. They're hardly that. They are ranging from Trump's populist protectionism to the now nearly forgotten (inside the party) libertarian thinking.

How do you think a free market operates? Consumers make choices in a market. They make choices based on the cost and quality of the goods or services. That's what the free market is all about. The idea of a free market is most certainly not that anyone can sell whatever they want and everybody is somehow morally obligated to buy it regardless of quality. If a consumer says, "I don't eat at Restaurant X because their food tastes awful", that's not anti-free market. That's the essence of what a free market is all about.

How do consumers evaluate the quality of products offered for sale? They might rely on personal experience. "I tried this product and it sucked." Or they may rely on the experience of others. They may get recommendations from friends, or they may consult professional critics or amateurs who publish their opinions, like restaurant or movie reviews, travel guides, Consumer Reports, etc. There is nothing anti-free market about telling your friends your opinion of a certain product.

And that's exactly what conservatives are doing in this example. They are telling people that they believe that a certain product being offered in the marketplace is of poor quality. In this case, that a key measure of the quality of news reporting is objectivity and honesty, and that they believe that certain news outlets are doing poorly in this area. Saying, "This news outlet is bad because they are biased and they spread lies" is similar in concept to saying, "This hotel is bad because the rooms are dirty and full of bugs". To repeat, there is nothing anti-free market about sharing your evaluation of a product. That is how the free market works.

If someone calls himself a conservative, and then calls for government censorship of news media to prevent bias against conservatives, that would be hypocritical. But evaluating products offered in the free market and telling others your opinion is not anti-free market at all. That's how the free market works.

The difference between a free market and socialism is that in a free market consumers make these decisions themselves, based on whatever criteria of "quality" they consider relevant, while under socialism, the government decides what producers are allowed to sell and what consumers are allowed to buy.

How do consumers