Conservatives Don’t Need Big Government to Solve Big Tech Problems
“Big government” has historically been the enemy of conservatives, with policy platforms centered around less government spending, lower taxes, and a free market economy with minimal government intervention. But for a subset of modern conservatives, a new opponent has emerged: “Big Tech.” These anti-Big Tech conservatives accuse large tech companies of suppressing free speech, eroding traditional conservative values, corrupting America’s youth, and pushing left-leaning ideology. Many of these anti-tech conservatives are even willing to use the hammer of big government, applied in capricious ways, to punish Big Tech, if that is what it takes.
The core belief behind this conservative techlash—or backlash against large tech companies and the Internet revolution more generally—is that Big Tech is colluding with other liberal institutions, including government, media, and academic institutions, to promote left-leaning ideology and silence opposition from conservatives. To anti-tech conservatives, these actions represent a threat to traditional conservative American values and need to be stopped at all costs, even if it results in bigger and more powerful government.
Multiple noteworthy conservative politicians have espoused anti-tech beliefs over the past few years, including former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump. Trump has a history of opposing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law that shields platforms and their users for liability for third-party content, which some conservatives view as enabling censorship by tech platforms. The Trump administration also started multiple antitrust cases against and investigations into Big Tech companies, a trend the Biden administration continued. This has culminated in a presidential election where both candidates, Trump and Harris, have shown hostility toward the tech industry.
The conservative techlash arose out of real concerns: over children’s safety, alleged political bias in social media content moderation, and pressure from the government to censor online speech. However, the policies anti-tech conservatives propose to solve technology-related problems—and punish Big Tech—come with significant costs for consumers, businesses, and the American economy. Social media bans for children, government regulation of content moderation, attacks on Section 230, a strict privacy law with a private right of action, and aggressive antitrust are unlikely to address conservatives’ concerns and will instead create even more problems.
Indeed, many of these proposed solutions are strikingly similar to those proposed by anti-tech liberals, despite conservatives’ and liberals’ opposite goals when advocating for these changes. Liberals have an animus toward platforms because they claim platforms do not take down enough speech, while conservatives do not like platforms because they take down too much. This bipartisan techlash shares only one major goal: punishing Big Tech for not adhering enough to their (either conservative or liberal) values. This retaliatory mindset violates a core conservative principle—rule of law—that would replace the innovative dynamism of the U.S. tech sector with crony capitalism if either conservatives or liberals decide that it is okay to weaponize government for political reasons. Moreover, this mindset leads to bad policy, particularly when punishing Big Tech is prioritized over other goals such as innovation, economic growth, competitiveness with China, and consumer welfare.
Conservatives would see more success by sticking to their core principles—free markets, limited government, and individual freedom. Instead of punishing successful companies with capricious and punitive antitrust actions, expanding government control over private systems and networks, and limiting parental rights and responsibilities online, conservatives should be on the opposite side of these issues. For example, they should champion policies such as giving parents more insight into and control over their children’s online activity, setting standards and transparency requirements for social media content moderation, passing a targeted federal data privacy law, and focusing government oversight on specific business practices that harm consumers. With this approach, conservatives can address their problems with Big Tech while maintaining a light-touch approach with far fewer costs, in line with conservative values of small government.
