Authored by Paul Bradford via American Greatness,
For years, some of the worst actors in the tech industry were able to do as they pleased without fear of consequence.
They could construct monopolies, censor conservatives, and promote wokeness as much as they wanted. But things are beginning to change with the Trump administration. Thanks to the efforts of the White House, the days of Big Tech wantonness are over. These companies now must follow the basic tenets of the free market and stop suppressing views they disagree with.
One of the leaders in this effort to correct Big Tech is FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson.
His agency recently announced it would ramp up its scrutiny of Microsoft and its allegedly anti-competitive practices. The FTC accuses Microsoft of advancing monopolistic practices in making it very difficult for customers to use the company’s signature products—such as Windows and Office—on rival cloud services. The agency is requesting information from both the tech giant and the companies affected by these malicious policies.
Microsoft is one of the worst offenders in the category of Big Tech malpractice. From dubious business practices to close ties to the Chinese Communist Party, Bill Gates’s company sets the bar for how low these giants can go. The China connection is particularly disturbing, as American Greatness has previously covered. Microsoft has allegedly shared information from Windows and Office code with elements tied to Chinese intelligence, allowed its cloud infrastructure to be compromised by Chinese assets, and had several of its initiatives work closely with partners from the Chinese defense industry. Microsoft certainly doesn’t put America first.
It also doesn’t respect conservative opinions. The tech giant touts one of the most aggressive records of censorship against the Right. Microsoft was one of the major backers of NewsGuard, a service that promoted itself as a guide to media reliability. Instead, it acted as a liberal hall monitor that suppressed conservative news sources and insisted on liberal framing of events. Thanks to NewsGuard, it became harder for internet users to find alternative viewpoints to the partisan mainstream media.
Microsoft is deserving of greater scrutiny due to its practices.
But Ferguson isn’t just focused on this one egregious offender. He’s dedicated to taking on all bad actors in the industry.
The FTC recently sent a letter to Apple, warning the tech giant to stop suppressing right-leaning sources and elevating leftist ones.
Ferguson wrote in the letter:
Big Tech companies that suppress or promote news articles in their news aggregators or feeds based on the perceived ideological or political viewpoint of the article or publication may violate the FTC Act if that suppression or promotion (1) is inconsistent with the terms and conditions of service; (2) is contrary to consumers’ reasonable expectations such that failure to disclose the ideological favoritism is a material omission; or (3) when those practices cause substantial injury that is neither reasonably avoidable nor outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or competition.
One of his first moves as Trump’s FTC chairman was to announce an investigation into Big Tech censorship.
The agency declared in its announcement of the inquiry, “Censorship by technology platforms is not just un-American, it is potentially illegal.”
The investigation encouraged Americans who have suffered from tech censorship and deplatforming to share their stories with the agency.
Last year, Ferguson reached an agreement with Omnicom, the biggest ad agency, to end discrimination against online ads for political reasons.
Many right-leaning companies and candidates have been affected by such discrimination.
Ferguson ensured that one of the main bodies responsible for it would no longer do so.
Ferguson’s actions are a refreshing and stark contrast to those of Trump’s first-term FTC Chairman Joe Simons, who defied a modest Trump executive order to go after Big Tech companies that deceived consumers about their censorship practices.
With officials like Andrew Ferguson, the second Trump administration is doing its utmost to solve these issues. Continuing the antitrust investigation of Microsoft is an important component of this strategy.
