In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on tech censorship, Sen. Richard Blumenthal attacked the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook for not censoring enough conservative content, claiming the platforms had taken only “baby steps” to tackling “incendiary misinformation.”
“According to the internal records that are on record now, leaked by NBC News, Facebook has removed fact checks and forgiven infractions for conservative pages and pundits such as Breitbart, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Gateway Pundit, based on a fear of accusations of bias,” declared Blumenthal.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg replied, “What we do sometimes is apply some judgement on whether the repeat offender policies would render too harsh of a penalty, but that’s different from overturning a specific fact check, and it’s not done for the reasons that you said.”
“I’m very concerned that, in fact, Facebook seems to have a record of making accommodations and caving to conservative pressure,” complained Blumenthal. “I recognize the steps, they’re really baby steps, that you’ve taken so far, but destructive, incendiary misinformation is still a scourge on both your platforms, and on others,” Blumenthal added.
“The recent actions you have taken, in fact, are simply to check the truth of what appears on platforms – often it is voter suppression and incendiary, malicious misinformation, and you’ve tried to slow its insidious spread,” said Blumenthal. “That’s not censorship. That’s moral and civic responsibility.”
No, it’s censorship because what the totalitarians Blumenthal and Zuckerberg want to suppress is not malicious misinformation but conservative arguments and positions.