Thursday, July 11, 2019

Google and Facebook Should Be Required to Be Labelled, Like Cigarette Packs

The President
The White House
Washington, DC

PO Box 130
West Shokan, NY 12494
July 11, 2019

Dear Mr. President:

Recent disclosures concerning Facebook and Google’s use of monopoly power to influence social networking and Web-search results require investigation and reform.    Property rights and economic freedom need to be balanced with protection from fraud.  America has yet to grapple with both the fruit of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration’s illegal use of political litmus tests in the granting of airwaves monopolies to the TV networks and subsequent, parallel political monopolization of the cable industry.

                With respect to social networking and Web-search technologies, the cloaked use of left-oriented censorship parallels that of the long-term health threats from tobacco.  People should have freedom to choose search engines even if they are biased, and suppliers should be free to compete and innovate as they choose.  However, to protect the public from fraud, please consider asking Congress to require that social networking and Web-search suppliers disclose that biases are built into their algorithms and what the biases are at the head of each search result, much as cigarette companies are required to disclose health threats on each pack of cigarettes.

                With respect to the airwaves and cable networks, which are federal- and state-granted monopolies, respect for property rights is consistent with a more interventionist response.  The cable industry should be asked to develop its own solution to current Democratic Party monopolization. The proportion of stations that openly support the Democrats is in excess of the cutoff for monopoly, often thought to be 80 percent of a market.  The cable-and-television networks should be asked to develop a plan to voluntarily balance partisan orientation, including to minor parties.  If the media firms are unable to come to an industry-wide solution, then a more interventionist approach to state-based cable monopolies will be appropriate.

Sincerely



Mitchell Langbert

Cc: Majority members of the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet

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