Welcome to the Breakpoint podcast in our Q&A segment Ask the Colson Center. I'm Shane Morris. I'm here with John Stone Street to answer your worldview questions. These questions were sparked by breakpoint commentaries, short courses, or the Colson Fellows program. If you'd like to ask a question of your own, all you have to do is send us an email at ask the Colson Center at

colsoncenter.org. John, our first question today has to do with the issue of big tech. And the

question that I think I've had a lot in the past as someone who really believes in the power

and importance of free markets, looking at a landscape that has transformed

vastly, where private entities, in many ways now, are a bigger threat to free speech, to expression

of ideas, to the general ability to just talk to each other and defend our viewpoints, then the government

is. And again, I say in many cases, the government still poses a great deal of threats,

but big tech in particular has changed the way we talk to each other. And the dominance of

progressive ideas in big tech really has challenged conservatives and Christians in particular to grapple with this

issue of where is the line? Where does, you know, free speech shade into a kind of private

restriction of speech? So I'll just read this question. This woman writes in, my husband and I

have a disagreement about how to handle big tech. I say we the people need a free

market system. If we start trying to regulate big companies, it will inevitably hurt the small

business the most. He thinks they must be regulated more and possibly even shut down. I think this is

a seemingly easy fix that will bite small business in the behind. We, the conservative people, have the power

to make big tech want to stop canceling conservative voices. We can use the very same free

market to our advantage. Is this idea a cop out? Is big tech too big to be hurt?

So there's two things that this communicates to me.

The question itself, the number one is that we are really an uncharted territory.

This is not something where we've ever had in the history of the world, this level of control or potential damage by a company that's a non-governmental entity officially.

So we're in new territory in many ways.

We've had big companies. We've had big

...