From Yang2020 – Andrew Yang for President:
- Create a Department of the Attention Economy that focuses specifically on smartphones, social media, gaming and chat apps and how to responsibly design and use them, including age restrictions and guidelines.
- Create a “best practices” design philosophy for the industry to minimize the antisocial impacts of these technologies on children who are using them….
Sounds pretty innocuous (and unnecessary as the market is far better at doing these things than a tax-payer subsidized committee of political appointees), until we get to the last point:
- Direct the Department to investigate the regulation of certain companies and apps. Many of these companies essentially function as public utilities and news sources – we used to regulate broadcast networks, newspapers and phone companies. We need to do the same thing to Facebook, Twitter, Snap and other companies now that they are the primary ways people both receive information and communicate with each other.
So the New York Times, WaPo and WSJ are like the phone company? So much for the first amendment. And don’t get too successful at what you do — or if you are a “certain” company on Yang’s crap list, you will become a “public utility” and lose your rights under Yang style “public interest” censorship. Yang’s “Human-Centered Capitalism” sounds a lot of like old fashioned fascism mixed with socialist-style welfare schemes.
Who is the public interest? “C’est Moi!” says Fuhrer Yang.
For those “Yang Gang’ers” who welcome federal censorship under a Yang Presidency, ask yourself if you would like the President to have such powers under a Trump government?
(Yang has removed from his site his previous call for a Federal Censor or “News Ombudsman” who will provide “penalties for persistent and destructive misstatements that undermine public discourse.”)