Dear Al Franken: Net Neutrality Is Not A Magic Wand You Can Wave At Any Company

Overhype

from the apples-and-oranges dept

By now, most Techdirt readers are well aware that net neutrality violations are just a symptom of the lack of competition specifically in the broadband industry. If we had lawmakers that were genuinely interested in policies that improve competition, we wouldn’t need net neutrality rules protecting consumers from often-unchecked duopoly power. In the absence of said competition — or lawmakers willing to stand up to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast — the FCC’s current net neutrality rules, however imperfect, are the next best thing.

And to be clear, net neutrality is something specific to the uncompetitive telecom industry. Yet we’ve watched for years as people have tried to take the concept and apply it to other, competitive sectors. AT&T, for example, has tried to foist regulations on Google by insisting the company violates “search neutrality.” Other folks, like Blackberry CEO John Chen, have similarly tried to push regulation on Google and Apple by trying to insist we need protections for “app neutrality.” Usually, these folks are only interested in saddling their own competitors with additional regulation, not actually improving the internet.

These folks consistently ignore the fact that this is an apples to oranges comparison. You don’t need search or app store neutrality rules because those markets are actually competitive. While there are certainly some exceptions, users offended by Google or Apple’s app store policies, privacy practices, or search engine behaviors have the choice of using a myriad of other services. The same can’t be said of the broadband industry, where 75% of the public technically only has one choice for broadband (as defined by the FCC at 25 Mbps). These problems aren’t directly comparable.

And while Al Franken has been a welcome and outspoken defender of net neutrality, he too fell into this trap this week during a speech given at the Open Markets Institute, a think tank devoted to fighting monopoly power. While engaged in a well-intentioned rant warning of the perils of unchecked social media power at the likes of Facebook, Franken conflated net neutrality with, well, something else entirely:

As tech giants become a new kind of internet gatekeeper, I believe the same basic principles of net neutrality should apply here: no one company should have the power to pick and choose which content reaches consumers and which doesn?t. And Facebook, Google, and Amazon ? like ISPs ? should be ?neutral? in their treatment of the flow of lawful information and commerce on their platforms.

Following years of hard work and dedication, we found in the Open Internet Order a strong and time-tested framework to protect net neutrality. While we fight to preserve the Order, we must now begin a thorough examination of big tech?s practices in order to secure the free flow of information on the internet.

Again though, net neutrality isn’t this universal concept you can just pick up and apply to other markets to try and make a point. And conflating the uncompetitive duopoly shitshow that is the telecom market with more competitive social media markets just doesn’t work. Users can and should choose to not visit Facebook if they find the company’s ethics troubling. You can use Duck Duck Go if you’re understandably wary about Google’s schnoz up in your business. There are options. There is competition in these markets.

Net neutrality is about ensuring duopolists can’t interfere in the free flow of information. What Franken’s proposing here is the advocation of interference, and urging government to dictate “search neutrality” or “website neutrality” could prove to be a muddy free speech rabbit hole, as Wired was quick to point out:

As with much of the backlash against big tech, Franken?s suggestions contain their own contradictions. Applying net neutrality rules to Google or Facebook, for example, could make them obligated to distribute content from political extremists and even foreign propaganda under some circumstances. Unfortunately for Silicon Valley, lack of solutions never stopped a congressional hearing.

Again, it’s fine to want to pressure Facebook, Twitter, and Google to better handle disinformation and propaganda (though it’s hard to “legislate away” a problem we don’t fully understand yet). It’s also perfectly reasonable to be concerned about the growing power these companies hold, particularly as it pertains to privacy. But these are very complicated and very different problems that require different solutions and different conversations. Conflating net neutrality here only aids companies like AT&T, which have long wanted to distort the concept of net neutrality to heavily regulate their Silicon Valley nemeses to ill effect.

We went down said rabbit hole once with the fairness doctrine, believing government was competent and incorruptible enough to be trusted to dictate “acceptable” speech. It would be a shame if we used the entirely different fight for net neutrality to justify making that mistake again.

Filed Under: al franken, net neutrality, platform neutrality, search neutrality
Companies: amazon, facebook, google