James R. Taylor, the President of The Heartland Institute, writes that Big Tech is hypocritical for using property rights claims to argue against government intervention in their businesses. Those same companies, he writes, have previously pressured government to intervene in the affairs of other businesses.
Certainly, Big Tech is hypocritical in its application of property rights. But hypocrisy is not a refutation of one’s position on a particular issue. Hypocrisy simply means that one is inconsistent, and Taylor amply demonstrates both inconsistency and hypocrisy in his article.
Heartland’s website states that the organization’s mission is “To discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.” However, Taylor’s proposal is not a free-market solution. Nowhere in his 683-word essay does Taylor even hint at a free-market solution to the problem of Big Tech “censorship.” Instead, he repeatedly calls upon government to regulate and control social media companies.
Ignoring the actual words in the Constitution, Taylor claims, “To secure our unalienable rights from private-actor threats is the primary reason why governments are instituted among men.” The First Amendment says nothing about private actors. However, it does state that, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble….” The Constitution wasn’t written to limit individual action. The Constitution was written to limit the powers of government.
Taylor disagrees with the claim that individuals who don’t like the policies of social media companies are free to use other platforms. “That argument ignores the fact that three social media entities control 97 percent of social media traffic and coordinate with each other to censor free speech.” Contrary to Taylor’s claim, as well as that of other conservatives, private companies cannot censor. They can prohibit the expression of certain topics or ideas on their platforms, but individuals remain free to express their ideas through other means, including alternative platforms, blogs, websites, books, and magazines. Only government can make the expression of certain ideas illegal.
Responding to the claim that prohibiting certain speech on one’s platform is a form of free speech, Taylor writes, “That is head-spinning, Orwellian logic. No American has a ‘free-speech right’ to shut down another person’s free speech.” I agree that no American has a right to “shut down” another’s speech, but Big Tech isn’t shutting anyone down. They are simply restricting the use of their property, something that every property owner does in one form or another. As Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the recent Cedar Point case, the right to exclude is an essential component of property rights.
Taylor goes on to claim that “Social media platforms should still be permitted to censor sexual obscenity and excessive violence.” In other words, Taylor finds it perfectly acceptable for social media to exclude content that he finds objectionable, but it isn’t acceptable to exclude content that he agrees with.
Like most conservatives, Taylor “defends” the free market on altruistic grounds:
Being a large and market-dominant entity does not necessarily equate to being a bad actor, of course. Indeed, a primary reason companies become large and market-dominant is because they are better than their competitors at providing a product or service that consumers value. Companies marked by this kind of success typically offer a net societal benefit, not a net societal harm.
In other words, a business should be free of government intervention until that company isn’t benefiting society. Taylor finds it acceptable for a company to dominate its market so long as it is serving some undefined and undefinable “public interest.”
As Ayn Rand notes,
Since there is no such entity as “the public,” since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that “the public interest” supersedes private interests and rights, can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.
In attacking Big Tech, conservatives want to elevate their rights and interests over those of Big Tech. They want to force social media companies to provide them a platform to express their ideas, but they want to deny those companies the freedom to control how their platforms are used. That is not a free-market solution. Nor is it just.
When alleged proponents of free markets and property rights call for government to regulate private businesses, they reveal their hypocrisy. Despite their words, they do not care of individual liberty. They do care about controlling those who do not act as they think proper.