Louisiana's Attorney General Wants To Break Up Google Over 'Bias'

The latest in this ridiculous political fight over the claimed, but not proven, "political bias" found in search results and social media is that Louisiana's Attorney General says we should break up the big internet companies because of it. He's not even hiding his unconstitutional anti-First Amendment reasons for doing so:

Landry says the internet giants are suppressing conservative agendas, stifling competition, and infringing on antitrust laws.

"This can't be fixed legislatively," Landry told The Advocate Tuesday. "We need to go to court with an antitrust suit."

Again, it's not at all proven that the internet giants are "suppressing conservative agendas." If they were, that would be quite remarkable, given that apparent "conservatives" control the White House, both houses of Congress, the judiciary and the vast majority of state houses. It would certainly then suggest that these internet companies aren't very good at suppressing such an agenda if they really were attempting to do so (and, spoiler alert: they're not).

But, of course, the larger point still stands: this is clearly a government official, looking to use not just executive power, but law enforcement powers, to intimidate companies regarding speech on their platforms. That is 100% unconstitutional. I already detailed a variety of cases that make this point, but it appears that law enforcement officials are going to ignore that, so long as they can politically grandstand on this issue.

But, just to flip this around: would Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry agree that Fox News or Breitbart should be hit with legal action for "suppressing liberal agendas?" Of course not.

Some will say that this is just politicians being politicians, and they'd have a point. But what's absolutely astounding is that some on the other end of the political spectrum are jumping on this just because they so hate Google. Matt Stoller, from the Open Market Institute, has spent the past few years misrepresenting all sorts of arguments concerning the internet companies, and pushing for them to be broken up. He sits very far away from Landry politically, but apparently as long as a politician wants to break up the internet companies (even in violation of the First Amendment) that seems to be cool with him:

The Louisiana Attorney General is now saying he wants to break up Google and Facebook. Wow. #BUFA https://t.co/sYFe1kh5uj

- Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) September 19, 2018

After people pointed out to him that Landry was just playing partisan politics, Stoller responded by suggesting that maybe it's for the wrong reasons, but at least someone is trying to break up these companies (despite there being no evidence to support such a move):

Lot of angry liberals saying he's doing this for the wrong reasons. Ok. Fine. But Democratic AGs aren't presenting the alternative on how to do this correctly. They are just supporting the status quo. https://t.co/hZXUZTyqt0

- Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) September 19, 2018

Lots of people have key issues that they think are important. For some that may be breaking up the big internet companies. But a general rule of thumb: if you have to spit on the First Amendment to get your wish, you're doing it wrong.