Politicians only care about a) their funders and b) fear of the voters. When it comes to a choice between those two, they'll chose (a) every time.

Follow the money almost always works for politicians. There are precious few exceptions.

If you look at conservative opinion formers, like Tucker Carlson, they're talking about breaking up major firms and so on. I think the ideology that was pro-oligarchy died on both the left and right in 2008, and only the most diehard centrists are believers in it

Some of it also has to do with the demographics of their audience. Fox news viewers skew older[1] (65, 66 for primetime) and likely are more skeptical of technology.

There's also some "working the refs" at play here, where there's conspiracy theories swirling that conservative content gets suppressed and prominent conservative voices are "shadow-banned." There's even a grassroots effort to get popular social media sites declared the "public commons" to prevent technology companies from removing content, but that's A) likely a pipedream B) Assuming it could hold up in court, would ultimately be a massive boon to the left as it would strike a decisive legal blow against the notion of "corporate personhood" and agency of private industry. A free-marketer's footgun, if you will.

[1] https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/heres-the-median-age-of-the-...

There’s always been conservative skepticism towards economic liberalism, like Bismarck and Theodore Roosevelt.

Historically, that's certainly true. But I'm not sure if modern conservatism has fully acknowledged their own ideological conflicts with free markets. It's all anecdotal, but talking to conservatives about these issues they often will say technology companies are cheating, employing anti-competitive practices, or even breaking the law and that such restrictions aren't changing market dynamics but simply punishing a few bad actors.

Really? That really surprises me given the free market arguments that he and others bring. Do you happen to have a specific example of him arguing this?

The idea is that the large tech companies are overwhelmingly staffed and lead by people who qualify as the political left by American standards. As Breitbart said, "Politics is downstream from culture." - so if you have the most important communications platforms the world has ever seen all privately owned and operated by "the left", that sounds like a bad thing if you're on "the right", because they can shape discourse however they want - either overtly by banning people for bad politics or covertly by shadowbanning and otherwise muting popular voices with undesirable opinions. Imagine if Google/Facebook/Twitter were owned by the Koch brothers and staffed by members of the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation - people on the left would be doing the same thing Tucker Carlson is doing.

>The idea is that the large tech companies are overwhelmingly staffed and lead by people who qualify as the political left by American standards.

they're certainly left of fox news, though i wouldn't call fox news "leftist"

> That really surprises me given the free market arguments that he and others bring.

Tucker Carlson holding inconsistent positions shouldn't be the slightest bit surprising.

https://dailycaller.com/2018/09/11/not-the-capitalism-i-sign...

> “So that’s the crux of it right there,” said Tucker. “You are hearing Google, or you have for the past ten years, Google, Facebook and a number of other companies defended on pro-market grounds,” Tucker said before making the point that a “monopoly changes the calculation completely.”

they only believe in free market as far as it benefits their corporate sponsors and private interests. As soon as it helps people that are not them (or look like them) they change their tune instantly.

They are hypocrites.

I agree only as far as those entrenched in Washington DC.

But would argue 'grassroots' conservatism believes state favored corporations, regardless of ideology, are anti free market.

>a significant portion of Republican base now considers Silicon Valley tech companies as foes

Which is hilarious, as Facebook at least is happy to take Russian money to aid Republicans. Silicon Valley is party-less, stateless. They serve only money, nothing else.

> party-less

I think that’s a stretch. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Mark Benioff (Salesforce), Tim Cook and Reed Hastings (Netflix) have all come out as rabidly pro-Democrat and have in many cases admitted to adjusting their platforms to shift public sentiment in favor of liberal politicians and liberal political causes.

> and have in many cases admitted to adjusting their platforms to shift public sentiment in favor of liberal politicians and liberal political causes.

Can you cite some sources on this? I'm curious as to how these admissions came about.

If they're doing it they aren't 'open' about it unless you think there's no difference whatever Alex Jones or Richard Spencer are and conservatives.