…except when such protection is directly in conflict with the big internet company’s ability to silence them, in which case censorship trumps the protection of individuals’ ability to speak. And that’s problematic.

This whole thing felt like a bit of an echo chamber. When Jerry Johnson said (paraphrasing) "yeah, I agree with y’all that we don’t want any regulation, we don’t want antitrust or consumer protection laws coming into effect here and we don’t want to break up any monopolies" I cringed a little. Because it really feels like that’s exactly what is needed lately, and nobody wanted to present that side of things. We had Eric (I think) saying we need more competition, but unwilling to even mention how you get that in a world of natural monopolies, which the Network Effect will inevitably give rise to.

He said he looks forward to a world ten years from now that doesn’t look like the one we have today with the Internet dominated by a handful of companies. Well, in the real world, we have two choices: enforce the laws we have against monopolies, or end up with the Internet dominated by a handful of companies. Maybe not the same ones we have today, but… there’s a reason the phrase "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" exists. If we want competition, we need to apply a force more powerful than the Network Effect. It really is that simple.