Don’t regulate Google News, sue them

By David Wojick | September 11th, 2019|Civil Rights, Technology|3 Comments

Now that we see the extreme anti-conservative bias in Google News search results (see my last few CFACT articles), it is time to think about what to do about it. In his July Media bias summit, the President alluded to using all the power of the American Government to address this issue, saying “Today I’m directing my administration to explore all regulatory and legislative solutions to protect free speech and the free speech rights of all Americans.”

In this case the free speech right is the right to read conservative news sources. Google’s position as a virtual monopoly, a public utility if you like, obligates it to serve this right with fairness, not with bias.

So what are some of the available approaches?

(Caveat. In some of what follows I know little about the topic. My goal is to start a conversation with those who do.)

To begin with, I would say that regulation per se is not suitable for single entity malpractice like Google’s bias. We don’t need or want to regulate all search engines.  This would be an administrative nightmare at best.  For single villain cases like this, litigation is the better strategy. In fact it is standard practice in regulatory enforcement actions...........To Read More....