Page 21 - TrumpsEconEra_Flat

Trump's Economic Era

and censored, she drove to a YouTube headquarters and
shot and wounded three people before killing herself.
These Silicon Valley giants have gained monop-
oly status with little government oversight. They were
allowed to grow unfettered in part because U.S. anti-
trust law views anticompetitive behavior primarily
through the prism of the effect on consumers. The
cheap products and free services of the Tech Giants
insulated them from government interference. If the
Justice Department had used the concentration of power
yard-stick, the government would have prevented
Google from buying YouTube and DoubleClick;
Facebook would not have been able to buy Instagram
and Microsoft LinkedIn. But now that these Tech
Giants have almost unfettered power in
cyberspace—they control the media, and therefore the
narrative.
In George Orwell’s book 1984, Winston Smith
worked at the records department at the Ministry of
Truth where his job was to rewrite history according to
big brother and party. The Ministry of Truth is very
similar to YouTube’s Community Guidelines Enforce-
ment Department. The passage below from the book
1984 sums up YouTube’s philosophy on what should
and what should not be allowed to exist on its platform.

“And if all others accepted the lie
which the Party imposed – if all records
told the same tale – then the lie passed
into history and became truth.”

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