The rise of Silicon Valley monopolies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter has been accompanied by a growing epidemic of censorship on the web.

Today’s tech giants are increasingly accountable to no one — arbitrarily blocking, filtering and censoring content that they alone determine is unfit for their platforms.

As our political, social and cultural conversations increasingly move online, allowing these unaccountable tech monopolies to be the sole arbiter of what information can be transmitted across the web gives them extraordinary power.

And as we have seen over the past several months, they are now abusing this power with dangerous and alarming frequency. Their willingness to randomly and arbitrarily censor content they don’t like is having devastating consequences for our free and open internet.

Ironically, the important principle of a free and open internet was championed by the tech monopolies themselves only three years ago, when in 2014 they supported Obama-era Title II regulations that required their ISP competitors to abide by rules that prevented them from blocking, filtering or censoring content that traveled across their networks. However, in a brazen display of hypocrisy and crony capitalism, tech giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon used their political muscle to ensure that they and only they were exempt from the rules.

In less than three years, Silicon Valley itself has used this special carve out to completely upend our free and open internet — arbitrarily blocking, filtering and censoring content that doesn’t fully comply with their leftist worldview.

We believe that it’s time for the rules to apply to all internet platforms, not just Silicon Valley’s competitors.

Please join Free Our Internet in the fight to take back the internet from leftist Silicon Valley companies determined to suppress our voices online. Here’s how you can help:

• Sign the petition on the right. We must tell House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) that rules banning online censorship must apply to everyone — broadband providers and Silicon Valley monopolies.
• Share this petition with your friends, family and colleagues. Urge them to do their part to protect online free speech by demanding that anti-censorship rules apply to Silicon Valley monopolies as well, not just their competitors.

This is the most important thing you will do today. Together we can send a strong message that we will no longer tolerate leftist monopolies determining what we can say or do on the web.

Sponsor

Free Our Internet

Links

http://freeourinternet.org/