The Digital Freedom Agenda
The tech industry gets away with a lot of their bad practices by making everything sound highly complicated and technical. If you cannot understand what they are doing, it is hard to stop them. And you have to say the strategy has worked — it has certainly befuddled politicians and regulators who quickly throw any problems into the too hard basket.
Simple concepts expose wrong doing that must be stopped
But when you sweep away all their manufactured complexity and break down what they are doing into simple concepts that the average person can easily understand — fair minded people clearly see much of what is being done by Big Tech is simply wrong and has to be stopped if we are live in a free and fair society.
The purpose of The Digital Freedom Agenda is to be a resource where:
- you can find Big Tech wrongdoing explained in simple, easy to understand terms that you can discuss with politicians and regulators at local, state, and federal levels of government. If we cannot help them understand what is happening, there will be no change
- Provide examples of what governments and regulators are doing to tackle this problem around the world. This is to help you get around the “it cannot be done” excuse or the “if we did that, the sky would fall in” excuse. By looking at these examples you can see:
2.a) what has been tried
2.b) how they implemented it
2.c) did it work
2.d) were there any adverse or unexpected consequences we need to try and prevent
2.e) example legislation that our politicians and regulators can use as a first draft to address these wrong doings.
Compliments Digital Freedom — Your guide to the Underground Railroad
The Guide to the Underground Railway outlines things you can do yourself today, to help achieve your own Digital Freedom
Where as the Digital Freedom Agenda is about things we need our politicians and regulators to help us with. These items are in no particular order — pick and choose the ones that are of interest to you, and talk to your friends, politicians, and regulators about them. Lets make change happen.
I will update and add to this list as time goes by — so check back regularly.
Social Media should apply editorial and moderation rules to all users fairly and equally.
“Florida’s SB 7072 law allows Floridians to take legal action against Big Tech platforms if they censor a user’s content without consistent standards.”
Advertising Monopoly — do not let BigTech use data for unfair advantage
“More than 90% of clicks on Australian internet ads were at least partly the result of one of Google’s offerings in 2020, the regulator said.
[Google] benefited from vast amounts of internet user data from its search engine, mapping and YouTube video streaming services, and must be made to clarify publicly how it used that information to sell and display advertisements.
Address the imbalance of advertiser access to consumer data, such as introducing a rule that would stop a company from using data collected by one part of its business to sell targeted advertisements via another part without a rival company getting the same benefit.”
BigTech should not eliminate competition by denying access to app stores
“When it was a smaller business, it relied on two Google platforms — the Google Play Store and Google AdMob. The Google Play Store accounted for over 90 percent of its app downloads and AdMob sales accounted for approximately 80 percent of Unlockd’s revenue.”
“Soon after the press started reporting on Unlockd’s upcoming IPO, Google informed Unlockd that Google would be terminating Unlockd’s apps from the Google Play Store and AdMob due to alleged violations of Google Play and AdMob policy, even though Google had previously confirmed Unlockd’s compliance with Google policy”
“Google violated the federal Sherman Act by maintaining its monopolies through “anticompetitive and exclusionary practices.”
The Digital Freedom Agenda (text only, excluding videos and graphics)© 2021 by Beating Big Tech is licensed under CC BY 4.0
