Give the Power-abusing IT Giants the Ma Bell Treatment

Have you heard the political left’s gnashing of teeth about a company called Cambridge Analytica and its unauthorized exploitation of Facebook users’ personal information for commercial purposes?  My immediate reaction was: Wait, isn’t that what IT monopolies like Facebook and Google do every day?

Fortunately, Michael Brendan Dougherty just explained at National Review the double standard being applied here. Cambridge Analytica’s sin evidently was not so much what it did as who it was helping – namely Republican candidates and, in particular, Donald Trump.

As Dougherty observes, Silicon Valley has no problem with its products being exploited – as long as it’s by Democrats like Barack Obama, whose abuse of Facebook-derived data made Cambridge’s pale by comparison.  But the IT giants are now working to ensure conservatives can’t do what Obama did.

Time to break them up like Ma Bell, before they abuse again.