The sacred right to heckle your leaders
There are good reasons to dislike Amazon, but calling out politicians isn't one of them.
I mentioned the Reddit acronym ESH - “everybody sucks here” - last week, and in my experience it rarely applies more perfectly as it does when politicians go after the tech behemoths.
I’m agnostic on the issue of whether Amazon, Facebook and other giant tech companies should be broken up on antitrust grounds. The amount of power they hold is almost incomprehensible, and they didn’t attain such power by playing nicely. I’m also skeptical that breaking them up would really accomplish that much.
As for the would-be trustbusters, I believe that politicians who grandstand about taking on big tech are doing so primarily out of self-interest. If it actually helps consumers and users, that’s gravy, but in the end it’s really about silencing critics and their opponents. (If any lefty critics of Amazon have gone after them for taking Parler offline or deciding they won’t sell politically inconvenient books anymore, I must have missed it.)
Last week, the Senior Senator from Massachusetts said the quiet part out loud:
I don’t have enough power to get my kid to stop watching YouTube, but let me assure Senator Warren that I remain 100% in favor of heckling her, and every other politician, with snotty tweets.
Not surprisingly, Warren is being yass-kweened all over Twitter for going after Amazon (whose social media person, it should be noted, comes across as kind of a dick) and it’s totally different from when ex-President Trump threatened to break up tech companies because they were mean to him. But Mike Masnick of TechDirt calls out Warren’s threat for the blatant abuse of power it is:
It's no secret that Elizabeth Warren thinks the big internet companies should be broken up. She's made that argument emphatically over the years. I'm not exactly clear what breaking them up actually accomplishes beyond punishing the companies, but as a Senator, she can certainly make the arguments for why it makes sense, or pass laws that impact how antitrust works.
However, what she cannot and should not do, is threaten to punish a company for its speech. And, yet, that's exactly what she did. …
[…]
Neither party comes out of this looking very good, frankly. It seems kinda silly for Amazon to get snarky about this. And Warren has every right to look into changing tax laws -- or to complain about lawyers/lobbyists seeking loopholes. That's her job.
But, even if you hate Amazon and love Elizabeth Warren her last sentence should greatly trouble you. It doesn't matter if Warren has lots of other good policy ideas regarding Amazon, or well documented reasons for breaking up the company. It doesn't matter that she was being snarky on Twitter in response to probably uncalled-for tweets from Amazon. At no point should a government official say that anyone should be punished for their speech. And that's what Warren has said by saying that she would "fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets."
Everyone should have the power to heckle Senators with snotty tweets. That's a core, fundamental principle of the 1st Amendment. Warren wipes away whatever goodwill she might have, and undermines her policy proposals and ideas when she attacks a private company for its speech. It no longer seems like a principled position. It no longer seems like a position based on what's best for the country. It now allows people to say she got upset over nasty tweets.
And, yes, that's even given everything else. Yes, she has plenty of other reasons to want to break up Amazon. Yes, this isn't a change in her position. Yes, she's being snarky on Twitter, and that's what Twitter is for. But none of that matters, just like it didn't matter when former President Donald Trump threatened companies for their speech, and his supporters said "aw, he's just joking" when people called him on that.
At no point is it appropriate for government officials to threaten to retaliate against speech, even jokingly.
Compared to Republicans insisting that the violent storming of the Capitol was NBD, Warren playing the “do you know who I am?!?” card against Amazon won’t keep me awake at night. (If Jeff Bezos wants to pay me enough to stay awake all night worrying about it, he can respond to this email newsletter.)
But it’s depressing to see how four years of Trump made even his strongest opponents unashamed to let their inner authoritarian out.
I was proud to supper Ontario MP Michael Chong in the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race a few years back, and I’m especially proud of him now:
China's decision to sanction a Conservative MP as well as a Parliamentary subcommittee is an attack on freedom of speech regarding human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday.
"China's sanctions are an attack on transparency and freedom of expression -- values at the heart of our democracy," Trudeau said on Twitter.
Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau called China's actions against Tory MP Michael Chong and on the subcommittee on international human rights "unacceptable."
"The Government of Canada stands with parliamentarians and all Canadians as we continue to work with partners in defence of democracy and freedom of speech and will continue to take action when international human rights obligations are violated," Garneau said in a statement.
Earlier on Saturday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China said in a news release it has banned Chong from entering the country and prohibited any Chinese citizen from doing business with him. The sanctions also targeted the federal subcommittee on which Chong sits, which is studying the situation of the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in China's Xinjiang region.
China said its actions were in response to sanctions levied by Canada on Chinese officials regarding the situation in Xinjiang.
Also, all of Chong’s orders from AliExpress were mysteriously “lost in the mail.”
By and large, Chong’s political opponents have his back. But it wouldn’t be Twitter without Tankies standing up for the Chinese Communist Party like Chris Crocker demanding we all Leave Britney Alone:
The emoji enthusiast’s Twitter bio says he’s involved with the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, in case you’re an Ontarian on the fence about homeschooling.
I believe this will be every bit as effective as every other online petition: