Monopolies are nothing new in our capitalist economy, but as Colorado Congressman Ken Buck aptly illustrates in his book “Crushed: Big Tech’s War on Free Speech” (“Crushed”), Silicon Valley’s current monopoly is more dangerous than earlier ones. Today’s Big Tech monopoly is both an economic threat and a serious risk to democracy and future innovation.
A former prosecutor and district attorney, Buck utilizes cogent reasoning, verifiable facts, and first-hand testimony received from Big Tech executives at congressional committee hearings. In 12 compelling chapters he describes how Big Tech has systemically used algorithms and financial clout to restrict free markets, crush competition, and actively manipulate information to censor news and unwanted opinions during election cycles.
The 18th Century British Monopoly
The East India Company grew from a 17th-century exclusive distributor of spices to an 18th-century economic behemoth offering textiles, tea, glass, lead, paper, and paint. When Dutch competition and overly aggressive purchases left the company with a massive tea surplus, the British government got involved because the company was deemed too big to fail. That led to levies and taxes that culminated in rebellious acts like the Boston Tea Party and colonists boycotting British products.
Buck references this history to illustrate the importance of free speech and freedom of the press, asking readers what would have happened if America’s printing presses had been shut down and if Britain would have had the power Big Tech does today to de-platform people like Thomas Paine or to censor groups like the Sons of Liberty.
The Marketplace of Ideas
Buck contends that Big Tech confounds innovation by crushing new ideas and start-ups. One way they do this is by placing their people in prominent government positions like the U.S. Patent Office. Buck recalls how, in 2014, Google’s former deputy general counsel was put in charge of overseeing intellectual property rights.This was noteworthy because the position includes oversight of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), a tribunal that has the power to decertify patents. Created under the Obama Administration, in its first decade this agency invalidated 84 percent of the patents it reviewed, meaning the inventor of the patented product lost both the previously held patent and the revenues it generated. Without patent protection, Big Tech oligarchs like Google, Facebook, and Amazon can copy new technologies that can hurt their market share if buying out the inventor fails.
Buck also explains how Big Tech uses other tools to eliminate competitors. For example, he describes how Google adjusts algorithms to suppress search results so their products display ahead of competitors’ products (self-preferencing), even if the competition has more site traffic.
Aside from economic strangulation, Buck shows how Big Tech’s repression of free speech quashes innovation, promotes censorship, and distorts the news by pressing its thumb on the digital scales of fairness and impartiality.
He Has the Receipts
“Crushed” explores both the economic marketplace and marketplace of ideas with relish. First, the author outlines with great specificity how Big Tech has created an economic monopoly used to bludgeon competitors. He offers a close-up look at anti-monopoly law and comparisons with how Big Tech’s current dominance compares to earlier monopolies during the Gilded Age and the unhealthy collusion of Western Union and the Associated Press during the election of President Rutherford B. Hayes.
He also outlines how Big Tech manages the flow of information through search results, burying news stories it doesn’t like, and censors and bans social media accounts to quash the dissemination of information and wreak undue influence in the electoral process. Two examples he cites are Twitter and Facebook’s ban of former President Donald Trump, and the blacklisting of the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
In “Crushed,” Buck does a good job giving readers a peek behind the curtain of Big Tech’s numerous abuses and includes recommendations on how to curb their influence. Requiring Big Tech to prove that future mergers and acquisitions will foster more consumer choice, not less, and prohibiting a single entity like Google from being the sole distributor of digital advertising and news are just two examples.
“Crushed” is a must read for any reader concerned about Big Tech’s undue influence on free speech and consumer choice today.
