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Conservatives have many issues with big tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter. We’re being purged, silences, and censored. Meanwhile the leaders in these and other companies have made it their personal mission to use the vast powers of influence they have through their platforms to manipulate next year’s elections. It’s a mess, but we can fight it if we unify behind a common goal of preventing socialism in America.
Freshman Senator Josh Hawley has been an outspoken champion of conservatives fighting against these big tech companies. But in his zeal, he has put together a very misguided piece of legislation that isn’t conservative, populist, logical, or productive. His Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (SMART) Act would make it illegal for platforms to use endless scrolling. It’s an attempt to fight social media addiction.
Of all the causes to champion, this is a very poor one. Of all the solutions to offer, this one comes out of left(ist) field as pure government overreach. Of all the nefarious things big tech companies do to harm America, this ranks at the bottom of the priority list if it even has a place there at all.
A lawmaker wants to end ‘social media addiction’ by killing features that enable mindless scrolling
“Big tech has embraced a business model of addiction,” Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said in a statement announcing the bill. “Too much of the ‘innovation’ in this space is designed not to create better products, but to capture more attention by using psychological tricks that make it difficult to look away. This legislation will put an end to that and encourage true innovation by tech companies.”
The senator has spent his first year in office taking on Big Tech. He grilled Google executives during hearings on the company’s data-collection policies. He wrote a scathing letter to the Federal Trade Commission, rebuking regulators for failing to protect consumers from privacy abuse and overreach by Silicon Valley. He proposed a major bipartisan update to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which would further curb tech companies’ ability to monitor the online behavior of kids.
I like Hawley, but this is completely misguided.
If there’s such a thing as treatable social media addiction, making it more difficult to use these platforms is one of the most senseless, progressive solutions one can offer. It basically says people are incapable of managing their own time and since so many people spend too much time on social media, the government has to intervene to stop a technological notion – endless scrolling – in order to save people from themselves.
No, Senator, we do not need to back away from basic technological advancements like endless scrolling. Let’s focus on real problems with big tech such as censorship and leave the technological fixes to people who do such things. Keep DC out of it.
We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.
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