Interesting approach, especially given that they don't seem to be concerned about having internet service providers declared public utilities.
Which is why it will obviously fail at actually doing anything useful.
However, the intended purpose may not be so much to do anything useful, as it is to score some points for incumbent politicians. In that, it could succeed brilliantly. It's actually a very smart move if you consider the political benefits accrued to politicians.
When I build a house, do I have to pay $25k to get my Google pipes hooked up? Seriously where are the parallels?
We can talk all day about how DuckDuckGo and ProtonMail exist. But for a huge, huge majority of people, Google simply is the internet.
You need electricity to get television, you don't need television to get electricity. You need electricity to get the internet, you don't need the internet to get electricity. Now whether or not television or internet are more useful than electricity is an entirely separate question. But which of the three is the baseline utility is a bit obvious.
But again, the intended purpose is probably not to make Google a utility, it's to score political points. So none of these arguments are really relevant to the calculus that a politician would work through before taking an action like this. This is still a brilliant action from a political perspective because it will undoubtedly win incumbents some votes.
Gmail maybe. Providing email as a utility service is a strained argument but could be made as there is a parallel to actual mail service.
Literally everything else Google does has a mainstream alternative that is a click away.
Except no one clicks away (most people).
OK. I dunno if that makes much sense to me, I don't think it does. (I am not a conservative fwiw). But thanks for clarifying!
That's what a dangerously broken society looks like. The common folk should never be openly supportive of "robber baron"-style political activism and it's unprecedented AFAIK.
It is not "obvious" to me that for instance Google is particularly partisan. Most big companies donate to both USA parties in large quantities, because they know they need to buy the politicians whoever is in power. I haven't looked it up, but I assume Google is similar in it's lobbying.
The largest companies are almost always mostly looking out for their own profits, and use their not inconsiderable power mostly to that end. And that's not unprecedented. I don't know if it should be less worrisome that we accept that uncritically!
(Btw, to say something is unprecedented and call it "robber baron style" is a bit confusing, since the term "robber baron" as applied to industrialists/capitalists is over 100 years old! Whatever the "robber baron style" is, it originated in the 19th century! so not unprecedented)
it's a very dangerous game
It undercuts their entire argument by making it look much more like a political stunt than any kind of serious action.
They're calling out the logical inconsistency of the claims being made, and in turn questioning the genuineness of the speaker's motive.
And no, political stance is not a protected class.
Reclassifying a privately owned business to restrict their freedom of association because you think they threaten your political views is autocratic behavior, not democratic.
My other option was to not have internet.
Funny how none of the Republicans pushing this censorship narrative batted an eye last summer when Facebook was taking down local BLM groups that called for violence.
By the way, spreading misinformation like the infamous lab leak theory? Facebook fact checkers are a joke, they're fact checking stupid memes.
Another thing is that I got suspended for butting in to a conversation about homosexuality where someone was saying that homosexuality is natural, and I said something to the extent of "rape and murder is natural too" to point out the fallacy and they sent me on a 30-day vacation from Facebook for that.
Second, not that this was your intent, but that's such a poor example to use in pointing out the fallacy that I can see why someone might see it as "hateful", which is against the TOS, whether or not it should be is a separate discussion.
As a side-note, pointing out a logical fallacy doesn't invalidate someone's argument, ironically this is itself a fallacy.
It becomes a fallacy when you say Opinion X is wrong because its proponents used fallacious Argument Y.
I left Facebook few years ago. I can't really back it up with anything, but I have a suspicion that this is the main reason why people are leaving Facebook. Not concerns about privacy.
> that's such a poor example to use in pointing out the fallacy
That's a really common example to show the flaws in appeal to nature argument and pretty much the best you can make, because not many people support rape and murder. That's the point.
> I can see why someone might see it as "hateful", which is against the TOS,
And that's the problem. Just as I said, your intentions don't matter and if someone interprets it as hateful then you're out. It's completely arbitrary.
> pointing out a logical fallacy doesn't invalidate someone's argument, ironically this is itself a fallacy.
Sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it does. Depends on what the argument and the context is.
The catch is, they label their own violence as speech, and their opponents speech as violence, conveniently.
Hidden camera interviews with numerous employees of the multiple tech monopolies in question reveal that not only do they in target people for censorship based upon their political beliefs and political speech, and in the service of the political parties to which they also overwhelmingly donate, but they do so with glee.
The actions of Facebook, Google, Twitter in their selective banning, deplatforming, and other algorithmic weaselry is often indistinguishable from an in-kind donation directly to the DNC.