Some e-mailers say I’m wrong. I quote

“The Facebook, Google and the rest are CIA/NSA funded intelligence gathering entities. Therefore you are wrong and Coulter is correct. Since public money created these entities they do in fact fall under the Constitution…So I suspect you are a paid CIA shill. Get a productive job! Looser!” [sic]

“Sorry to break the news to you but your article is completely wrong. You are apparently unaware that SillyCon Valley is not composed of private companies. All of them were and are funded at least in part by govt money, surely at times the black budget. Their operations are also supported by the Fed’s zero interest rates and the Wall Street gang that allows money losing operations to borrow billions of dollars, a privileged the real business would obviously be denied…Google et al are in fact arms of the Federal govt.”

These arguments in support of Ann Coulter’s call for regulating the media companies are saying that since the government has funded the companies, it should now go further and regulate their products. I don’t buy either the premise or the inference.

Funding isn’t revenues or sales. Funding of companies has to be distinguished from sales or revenues. Funding is mainly by stocks, bonds and bank loans. Facebook has a financing history. It was financed by venture capitalists. The government doesn’t own stock in Facebook. Facebook isn’t financed by bonds issued to the government. Public money did not create Facebook. The financing facts are in complete opposition to what these pro-Coulter supporters are saying.

I haven’t checked the financing of other such companies or tech companies in general, but I’d like to see where in the U.S. Treasury there is a venture capital fund that’s investing in these media companies. There are tax breaks for various energy enterprises and for Tesla, for example, but these are not our subject.

The government is big and it buys many products from many companies, including the social media companies. Does that mean the government funds them? No, because funding isn’t the same as sales. Funding is accompanied by contracts and controls, by choosing directors, by ownership and obligations. Buying products from these companies doesn’t mean that the government controls them or should have control over them.

The government’s surveillance links to the media giants are odious, but that doesn’t imply that the government should have even more power to control speech. The inference being drawn doesn’t follow from the (false) premise even if it were true.

Has the government directed Facebook to toss off Alex Jones and others? No, but a lot of pressure has been exerted by politicians related to the election and one result is greater censorship and biased censorship. Last November, as one example, Senator Feinstein very strongly threatened them: “Senators blast tech companies over Russian meddling: ‘Do something about it — or we will’”. These companies have had to respond somehow in order to prevent regulation.

The problem here is not direct government control or direct funding or NSA contracts, but the threat of heavy-handed Congressional regulation. Feinstein said “What we’re talking about is a cataclysmic change. What we’re talking about is the beginning of cyber warfare. What we’re talking about is a major foreign power with the sophistication and ability to involve themselves in a presidential election and sow conflict and discontent all over this country.” She’s vastly exaggerating, but it’s still a threat that the companies have reacted to.

This foreign power situation and this Congressional alarm situation won’t be rectified by what the companies have done to Alex Jones, and it won’t be rectified by having Congress somehow declare them to be government entities so that they must allow all voices to be heard under the First Amendment.

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