Big Tech vs free speech                       

In 2009, Ralph Nader (for whom I long ago worked), published Only the Super Rich Can Save Us.

But today, far from saving Americans, some of that class have reportedly colluded in secret to stifle our voices. Politically conservative figures like Milo, Dennis Prager, Alex Jones /
Infowars, Laura Loomer, Mike Cernovich, and recently Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys have suffered social media and other internet silencings by the biased barons of Big Tech.

Those important speakers have been effectively stifled from presenting news information and promulgating ideological and cultural opinions by scheming, anti-freedom conspiracists said to include Larry Page (CEO of Google parent Alphabet), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), and Jack Dorsey (Twitter). 

Also implicated have been Apple, Youtube, Spotify, Disqus, Pinterest, LinkdIn, and others. Infowars just reported it has also been banned by Vimeo and ad platform Criteo.

"The mass brigading of Infowars began after CNN started a lobbying campaign attempting to have us shot down by social media giants," wrote Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars, on Monday.

In a Saturday Infowars article also by Watson, free speech authority Professor Noam Chomsky and inventer/encryption expert Louis Parry -- not fans of Alex Jones and Infowars -- were adamant that Silicon Valley's choreographed elimination program targeting political perspectives disliked by CEOs pose real and population-wide perils.

"The real story about marginalization of opinion and information is, as always, radically different, and undiscussed," Chomsky said.

"Free speech is free speech and multinational cabals must be checked," Parry stressed. "Particularly when their monopoly corporate decisions lead to the reduction of our free speech rights...Multinational corporations with no duty or loyalty to anyone have set out to collectively undermine the free speech rights of us all...Who do these hidden rulers of the world think they are to form this kind of cabal?”

The injury to communicative interests goes far beyond particular internet voices. Also necessarily wronged are millions of potential listeners. Only last Friday, the Gateway Pundit reported an Alex Jones video posted to Youtube by Gab's Andrew Torba had been deleted by that site.

In a tweet about the quashing, Youtube commentator Mark Dice quipped: "Looks like if you include 'Alex Jones' in the title of your Youtube livestream, it will automatically be shut down and your channel issued a community guideline strike. #Orwellian."

Because this Big Tech conspiracy practically benefits the Democrat Party by impeding conservatives' speech liberties and potential attitude-impacting outreach, it may well constitute an 'in kind contribution' of massive and election-altering proportion. 

The phenomenon of unelected private business chieftains effectively stomping on citizens' throats has a parallel in recent history: 

Traditionally, the American town square was a place where every man, regardless of view, could express his ideas in whatever words he pleased. But the 1970s brought privately-owned shopping malls, contained and regulated 'town square' environments where citizens' speech could be either approved for dissemination or denied that by corporate interests with their own values and not beholden to Constitutional guarantees.

Defenders of the contemporary Big Tech political ideas clampdown argue that -- as private entities, like shopping malls -- social media companies are entitled to set their own standards. While the First Amendment prevents the government from censoring citizen expression, they point out, it does not prohibit private actions within businesses.

But in 2018, the internet basically is the public communications sphere. Its unique capacity for information access and conversational transmission linking millions of Americans across great geographic distances and effecting our electoral process and civil government sets it distinctly apart from strip malls of local influence.

In a Sunday Breitbart piece, Gavin McInnes predicted Big Tech bannings will not only increase, but claim Breitbart, Fox News, and other conservative news and perspectives outlets. And he called for White House intervention.

"Trump has to stand up and say 'This is not the free market, this is collusion with the DNC and big business and Big Tech, and this is illegal, that's un-American, that's not acceptable.'...We can't have the DNC deciding how big companies will behave. That's fascism."