The last
few weeks has had a remarkable glut of instances where conservatives bemoan their
victimhood in the Internet ecosystem. With
much snark and righteous indignation, conservative Senators, FCC Commissioners
and of course incumbent operators, rail against various instances where the
deck is stacked against them.
Senator Thune
of South Dakota wants to investigate alleged bias in Facebook’s compilation of current
trending news. See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/technology/facebook-thune-conservative.html; and http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/technology/conservatives-accuse-facebook-of-political-bias.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0. The Wall
Street Journal suggests Facebook should explain how its algorithms work in
the spirit of “transparency;” see http://www.wsj.com/articles/share-this-on-facebook-146292180. Of course, you don’t hear a similar
expectation that Fox News explain how it lives up to its tag line: “Fair and
Balanced.”
Did Senator
Thune call for a network neutrality mandate for Facebook, or worse yet, a
government mandated “Fairness Doctrine”?
The two FCC
Republican Commissioners go farther alone the victim trail. They start with a knee jerk bias supporting
incumbent stakeholders no matter how bad that favoritism hurts consumers. Based on this logic, there is nothing the FCC
could or should do to promote set top box competition. Ask just about any cable television
subscriber how they feel about compulsory set top box rentals and you will get
an earful. Commissioner Pai wants the
elimination of a set top box requirement, yet he remains oblivious to decades
of efforts by the cable industry to prevent a return to “cable ready” television
sets. How can Commissioner Pai not know
that the cable industry has worked tirelessness to prevent the CableCard option
from working and providing an alternative to monthly rentals of the cable
television operator’s box?
Both
Commissioners seem adverse to the FCC releasing congressionally mandated
reports, especially ones that reach negative conclusions about the state of actual
competition, or release inconvenient statistics. For example, the recently released 17th Report
on Video Competition (see http://www.wsj.com/articles/share-this-on-facebook-1462921801)
offers damning statistics about cable television market concentration and the remarkable
lack of CableCard use in set top boxes and video recorders not supplied by
cable operators. While 99% of the United States has access to 3 MVPDs (2 DBS
and 1 cable television), 36% have access to a fourth option provided by a
telephone company. Operator-supplied set-top boxes used 53 million CableCards
versus 613,000 in retail devices not supplied by the service provider.
Despite
damning statistics, the Democrat majority joined with the Republican minority
in approving mergers that further consolidate the industry. Rather than applaud this, FCC Commissioner
Pai rants about the “"ideologically inspired extortion[ate]” nature of
conditions designed to prevent ever larger firms, which by the way control most
of the broadband market, from unfairly exploiting they market power.
News flash:
the FCC approved the merger despite generating 100s pages of evidence why it’s
a bad deal for consumers. To quote Shakespeare
Commissioner Pai “doth protest too much.”
From my
perspective conservatives protest too much.
Apparently few conservatives get collegiate teaching opportunities in
the U.S. Yet I see a bias in their favor in terms of access to sponsored research
dollars, conferences and publications.
There are far more conservative foundations out there ready to nurture
and fund like-minded researchers. There
are times where my unsponsored, independent work gets crowded out, not by
better work, but by work that more closely aligns with the conservative agenda.
Bottom
line: conservative ideology—particularly that with a market orientation—has become
mainstream. Fox News rules the
airwaves. Even as their first mover
market advantage should wane, incumbents benefit from conservative FCC
Commissioners who ignore rent seeking tactics and support them.
I thought
conservatives abstained from selecting market winners and losers.