This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021. I'm Caleb Brown.

Conservatives used to be optimists, right? But when it comes to big tech, the widely

touted threat it poses for the ability of conservatives to share their opinions and arguments to their audience

Conservatives seem less than interested in advancing or adopting open source or blockchain-based solutions for their communication needs.

Matthew Feeney directs Cato's Center for Emerging Technologies.

Conservatives have a lot of beefs with big tech and social media in particular.

When you go through the list, what seems to be at least the most reasonable sounding to you.

Of the concerns associated from with the Republican Party?

Yeah, I think if you take a look at the Republican, there are a range of complaints about what people

call Big Tech, which is a label I have a number of issues with, mostly because it includes Twitter,

which I think by any reasonable definition really doesn't belong in the same category as Facebook or Google,

but let's put that to one side. There are a bunch of companies called Big Tech and Republicans are very

angry at these companies, so why are they? The most prominent I think of the criticisms is that there is a bias in Silicon Valley against Conservatives.

So the allegation is that these companies are run by people who are very left or centre and those

political biases trickle down into content moderation. And as a result, prominent conservative activists

and conservatives find themselves see the so-called

de-platformed or kicked off these platforms. The most prominent probably being, probably being

of course the former president of the United States Donald Trump who was removed from Twitter and Facebook.

Now that that concern I think is

understandable given the media environment wherein. I haven't seen hard great

empirical evidence that it's true, but but for us as libertarians I think the most

important thing to consider is even if it is true that the Silicon Valley giants are hell bent on

...