The Dystopian Reality of Utopian Dreams

Why, in this age of nondiscrimination, do conservative websites face discrimination in a liberal neighborhood?

A few times over the years, I’ve taught seminars about social media. Facebook, I’d explain, is like a planned community. People view it as a safe neighborhood. Your page is your house, and your friend’s page is his house. There are other neighborhoods, such as Twitter and YouTube. Then there’s the information superhighway, Google. It’s important to know that it’s all connected. There may be dark alleys that are difficult to find, but they can be found. The internet is forever. This article was originally published in the American Spectator print magazine. Click here for online access! Imagine that the online neighborhood is a real neighborhood. Imagine living in a planned community with a corporate owner who built the infrastructure and then sold out parts of the property for individual homes and for businesses. The corporation would make money from fees and taxes on things bought and sold in the district. The corporation would be very rich. It would receive, after all, a piece of every pie in the community. Now imagine the corporation making decrees about who could and could not live in the homes. Perhaps they didn’t like a person’s color, religion, or politics. Imagine the corporation deciding that a business in a strip mall sells a product it does not want the company to sell after it has made thousands of dollars in taxation and fees on that business. Further, imagine being kicked out of one’s home or business overnight and losing everything in a blink. There’s no Homeowners Association. There’s no government police force. Friends of the corporate owners live and work as free as they like. Those who disagree with the corporation’s policies are banned from the community. They lose their business. The value of everything they own is gone overnight. A person can build a social media home and persona, he can build his business, and with a keystroke, the corporation can destroy him. As it stands now, there are laws against discrimination for mortgage lenders, renters...