What about a day without Google-Facebook?

Can you imagine a day without Google-Facebook?

For many – too many, I suspect – such a notion is unthinkable.

"How will I know what's going on?" some might ask. "How will I know what to do? How will I stay in touch?"

That means they've got you right where they want you. That's where they've always wanted you. In their database, knowing everything about you – where you go, what you do, who and what you email to others – maybe even anticipating your every move if you are a creature of habit.

Isn't that just a little bit scary? But it's even worse than that, because they are profiting bigtime from the most personal information about you. You have no idea what they know, but it's worth a lot to them – untold billions.

If the federal government were diabolically collecting as much information about you, wouldn't you rise up and protest? And if the government were systematically monetizing your personal data, selling it others, controlling the information you read, watch and listen to, I suspect you might be marching in the streets.

So, why do you tolerate two of the biggest private companies in the world doing it to you?

You probably do so because you see them as "free services." But they are anything but free. In fact, they are robbing you blind – not necessarily of your money, but of your privacy and your freedom.

I'm convinced that if something isn't done soon to rein them in, freedom of the press and freedom of speech will be all but lost.

Do I exaggerate?

Not at all. They have too much control over the means of distribution of information. Imagine if you got all your news through one or two filters. We're almost there. Between these two channels, they control 75 percent of the digital advertising market. That's no longer a free market. It's a duopoly. It's a cartel. It's a trust that has broken trust and needs some anti-trust activity from Washington to bring them back to size.

Now, I've never been one to rely on government to know what's best for us. But I know this: Government may be the only way to stop Google-Facebook from controlling the public's access to information.

When a cartel like this makes decisions on what's acceptable political discourse in this country and makes them on the basis of ideology, it won't be long before voices like WND and Breitbart and Daily Caller can't support the independent journalism they do.

Once those big independent, alternative news sources are out of the way, they will be coming after you – like Google-owned YouTube did to Dennis Prager and is now threatening to do to Alex Jones.

You may not like some of these voices. But that's not the point. Do you want to live in an information world that is controlled by a couple of giant corporate entities that make all the rules without any accountability to the people who made them so big?

I've been very honest about what this will mean to WND, the first independent online news service in the world back in 1997. We've weathered all kinds of adversity in that role. But we cannot succeed on a communications playing field that has been systematically and deliberately made uneven and unlevel because of the political and cultural sensibilities of Google-Facebook.

Right now, they are starving us of ad dollars. They are denying us traffic because of ideology. They are deliberately trying to put us out of business or reduce us to an irrelevancy. In fact, we wouldn't still be here if it were not for the voluntary financial contributions of WND visitors helping to make up for the lost revenue it takes to provide this truly free service that has been here for more than 20 years by aggressively defending your liberty and your privacy, not trying to take it away.

So, let me throw it out there: Should we organize a day without Google-Facebook? Could we do it? Would it be effective as a way of getting their attention – or, perhaps, President Trump's attention? Could we even provide a small ding in revenues of this cartel with a one-day boycott of any use of them for 24 hours? Would we have a collective nervous breakdown with them? Would we have Google-Facebook withdrawal symptoms?

I'm not so much proposing it as much as I'm asking you what you think.

All I know is something must be done.

I'm not willing to lose my business, my privacy and my freedom without a fight. What about you?