Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert is tired of social media giants claiming to be neutral bystanders in politics while filtering out conservative ideas and personalities, and he wants to hold them accountable.
Gohmert introduced legislation Thursday to remove liability protections for social media companies that use algorithms to hide, promote, or filter user content, perhaps the first serious attempt to rein in conservative bias on social media that’s become rampant in recent years.
“Social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google are now among the largest and most powerful companies in the world. More and more people are turning to a social media platform for news than ever before, arguably making these companies more powerful than traditional media outlets,” Gohmert said in a prepared statement.
“Yet, social media companies enjoy special legal protections under Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, protections not shared by other media,” he said. “Instead of acting like the neutral platforms they claim to be in order to obtain their immunity, these companies have turned Section 230 into a license to potentially defraud and defame with impunity.”
Just in the last year, Facebook has deemed Diamond and Silk’s pro-Trump vlogs “unsafe to the community,” censored the Declaration of Independence, covered a picture of Santa kneeling in front of baby Jesus, and banned numerous high-profile conservatives from commenting or posting ads.
It’s a similar situation with YouTube, Twitter, and Google News, which reportedly skews results toward “left-leaning” news sites like CNN and MSNBC. Congress cited numerous examples of blatant bias when they grilled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others about conservative censorship in hearings this summer, but officials at Facebook and Twitter have denied anything intentional.
Virtually all of the censorship is justified by policies against “offensive” or “hateful” words or images, as interpreted by company employees.
Gohmert’s bill comes a little over three months after the Department of Justice announced it’s investigating whether social media companies are “hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas.”
But the complaints keep coming.
“Representatives of social media companies have testified in Congressional hearings that they do not discriminate against or filter out conservative voices from their platforms. But for all their reassurances, the disturbing trend continues unabated,” Gohmert said. “Employees from some of these companies have communicated their disgust for conservatives and discussed ways to use social media platforms and algorithms to silence and prevent income to conservatives.”
Undercover video investigations by Project Veritas exposed what some employees at Twitter think about the president, and how they’re working against him and other conservatives in a variety of ways.
Gohmert contends one social media executive who testified before Congress this summer “indicated a desire to be treated more like Fox News” and he hopes to do exactly that by cutting social media companies out of Section 230 protections.
“Fox News does not have immunity and this bill will fulfill that unwitting request,” Gohmert said. “Since there still appears to be no sincere effort to stop this disconcerting behavior, it is time for social media companies to be liable for any biased and unethical impropriety of their employees as any other media company. If these companies want to continue to act like a biased medium and publish their own agendas to the detriment of others, they need to be held accountable.”
In the meantime, Facebook, the Anti-Defamation League, the University of California-Berkeley, and others are developing artificial intelligence that will automatically censor anyone who might offend someone else with “hate speech,” Information Liberation reports.
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