Facebook’s blatant shadowbanning and censorship of PragerU was a distinct “First they came for…” moment.

BREAKING: We’re being heavily censored on @Facebook.

Our last 9 posts are reaching 0 of our 3 million followers. At least two videos were deleted last night for “hate speech” including our recent video with @conservmillen.

SHARE to spread awareness about big tech censorship! pic.twitter.com/k83HqmlMRc

— PragerU (@prageru) August 17, 2018

It’s not hard to imagine how this came about. And I’m sure Slack chat records would reveal some social justice Facebook people who decided that the one video they came across was just going too far. And it was time for Facebook to step up.

It’s happened before. And it’ll happen again. Meanwhile it’s only getting worse.

Facebook and Google, which had also censored PragerU, have more ability to censor public speech than most countries that don’t have “China” in their name. They can literally censor the speech of billions of people.

The usual mindless establishment conservatives keep chirping that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to Facebook or Big Tech companies.

Of course it doesn’t. That’s not the point.

The First Amendment limits the power of government. But there are plenty of laws that limit the power of companies. And more laws can be created, if need be. The sheer dominance of Google, Amazon and Facebook cries out for an anti-trust solution.

We have laws that protect us from government abuses. And we have laws that protect us from abuses by individuals and organizations. The First Amendment protects us from government abuses. There are regulations that limit the power of broadcast networks. There needs to be a digital equivalent on any company that has the sheer user base that Facebook and Google do. They’ve campaigned for net neutrality.

Content neutrality should apply to them.

When a single company controls the marketplace of ideas, the speech of 2 billion people, that’s both unprecedented and demands action.

The problem, as I laid out in Friday’s article, is the centralization of Big Tech around a handful of companies.

The internet was free when control over its medium was diversified. Its message ceased to be free as its core platforms became centralized… centralization made censorship inevitable. Once a small number of interlocking companies gained the power to choke off free speech on the internet, it was only a matter of time until they did it.

Free speech can’t only be protected legislatively; it must also be protected at a technical level.

The First Amendment didn’t create a new ability. It protected an existing one. Without a printing press in every town, freedom of the press would have been an absurdity. Google, Facebook and Amazon’s centralized control over the internet have made the First Amendment into just as much of an absurdity.

Centralized control over speech by any organization inevitably leads to government censorship. The only way to protect freedom of speech on the internet is to decentralize the control of big tech companies. As long as Google, Facebook and Amazon can choke off freedom of speech at a moment’s notice, it’s not a question of whether speech on the internet will be censored, but when it will be censored and why.

This is a crisis that I’ve been warning about for years. And the potential threat is greater than shadowbanning or censorship.

A company that controls the majority of discourse is in the position to control politics and government. No free society can allow such a thing, even in the name of a free market. A free market is meant to protect freedom. It is not meant to enable tyranny.