‘The government made us do it’ should not suffice to avoid accountability, nor should it instantly restore the public trust so blatantly betrayed.
E ven the casual observer must have looked on with befuddled amusement at the disastrous “rebranding” of Cracker Barrel and subsequent backpedaling by the restaurant chain. Customers and shareholders alike were relieved to see the company return to its traditional logo and decor. But the most recent shift in corporate America is far more significant and deserving of cautious optimism and vigilant scrutiny.
Google, which sits among titans atop Big Tech’s digital Mount Olympus, announced what could turn out to be the most meaningful corporate policy change of the 21st century.
Google certainly could not match the speed of Cracker Barrel in reversing course. (The restaurant chain’s “180” happened faster than you can say, “Yes, of course I would like gravy with that.”) But what Google lacked in swiftness, it attempted to make up for in substance.
After years of obfuscation, Google finally owned up to its past censorship of content and viewpoints on its most popular public platform, YouTube. The admission came in a letter sent to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio). Beyond merely admitting to its censorious actions, Google seemingly repented of the lack of courage to stand up to the Biden administration’s pressure to deplatform, demonetize, and silence the dissent of scores of American citizens. Google denounced the government’s coercion of the company into the censorship industrial complex as “unacceptable and wrong.”
The announcement was replete with commitments similar to those from Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Elon Musk’s X. The changes include an open offer to reinstate accounts formerly banned and replace its infamous “third-party fact checkers” with an X-style “community notes” model.
Many Americans, especially those on the receiving end of Google’s censorship, may still question this renewed commitment to free speech. Yet, just as President Ronald Reagan’s “trust but verify” approach to the Soviet Union was a mix of relentless inspection and sunny optimism, which history proved correct, there is cause for hope. In addition to the long-overdue mea culpa, Google’s letter concludes by denouncing the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
The guile of the DSA’s Orwellian title is only exceeded by the audacity of its objective. The DSA asserts European technocrat control over every speaker in the virtual public square around the world. The once-global free marketplace of ideas is now subservient to the busybodies in Brussels. It is a Brave New World indeed.
The DSA weaponizes social media companies like Google, X, Meta, and Amazon to silence anyone, including Americans, for speaking views disfavored by any member country of the EU or face fines of 5 percent of their global revenue per offense. As Alliance Defending Freedom International’s Lorcán Price testified earlier this month before Representative Jordan’s committee, the DSA is best described as “Delete your speech, Silence your views, and Abolish your freedom.”
The EU’s assault on speech would subject Americans to a censorship regime from across the pond by intentionally detouring around the protections of the documents crafted in Philadelphia almost 250 years ago. As Google stated in its letter to Jordan, the DSA and its sister legislation, the Digital Markets Act, “place a disproportionate regulatory burden on American companies” while “jeopardizing the companies’ ability to develop and enforce global policies that support rights of free expression and access to information.”
Conservatives, libertarians, and even some free-speech-loving liberals greeted Google’s announcement with justified skepticism. “The government made us do it” should not suffice to avoid accountability, nor should it instantly restore the public trust so blatantly betrayed. Calls to break up the concentration of power in Google’s monolithic ability to control access to the free flow of information are not subsiding. Antitrust advocates point to the fact that no other technology company has become so omnipresent as to have its name used as a verb in common parlance.
Still, the Reaganite optimists among us can point to Google as the latest in an emerging trend of renewed respect for free speech in media and technology. Stemming the rising global tide of censorship will require courage from political leaders and C-suites in America. Collaboration between government and corporate influence in defense of freedom is the type that Americans should encourage. And thankfully, courage is contagious. But don’t take my word for it; you can google it.