Tech’s right wing urges regulation of internet

SAN FRANCISCO — A year ago, Andrew Torba would have balked at the idea of regulating the internet. He is a conservative, and like many other technologists here, he adheres to the long-standing Silicon Valley belief in a free and open web, unhindered by government interference.

But things changed in wake of violence in Charlottesville, Va., when one technology company after another shut down or cut off service to right-wing accounts and sites.

Today, Torba is part of a growing chorus of rightleaning technologists and leaders who have started to sound more like liberals when they talk about Silicon Valley giants such as Google, Apple and Facebook.

Events in Charlottesville and at Google, where an employee was fired for disparaging the company’s diversity policies, have pushed them toward an unexpected battle cry: Tell the government to force powerful internet companies to allow anyone to express themselves on their platforms.

The issue is beginning to percolate in Washington. And it is expected to take center stage this weekend when right-wing protesters are planning to descend on the liberal heart of the nation’s tech sector. The groups are holding rallies in San Francisco on Saturday and near the campus of the University of California at Berkeley on Sunday.

The Saturday event in San Francisco, organized by Patriot Prayer, a group from Portland, Ore., is billed as a free speech rally, while organizers of the Berkeley gathering are calling it a “No to Marxism” march on their Facebook page.

The leaders for both rallies wrote on Facebook that the KKK and neo-Nazis were not welcome. (They did not respond to requests for comment).

“The tech companies should stop censoring users that they politically disagree with or governments should regulate them as public utilities,” Torba’s spokesman Utsav Sanduja said.

Last year, Sanduja and Torba founded Gab.ai, an alternative social network for free speech advocates.

“Imagine if a private corporation owned all the highways and they decided to close them down whenever they feel like it — that is what it’s like. You cannot deny people a fundamental staple of the internet.”

The language by the Gab founders and other conservatives mirrors Democrats’ long-standing arguments that telecommunications infrastructure should be treated as a public good.

But liberals have been more hands off when it comes to social media and other Silicon Valley-provided services.