FL Governor Ron DeSantis TORCHES Big Tech for Censorship, ‘Doing Damage to Society’

June 14th, 2021 3:05 PM

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) raked Big Tech companies over the coals for being a hazard to America. 

DeSantis scorched Big Tech companies during a Sunday Morning Futures interview.  "When they’re censoring things about some of the most important issues that we’ve ever addressed — how COVID started, whether lockdowns work —- you know they’re really doing damage to society," he observed. 

Host Maria Bartiromo discussed the recent revelations of the emails that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci shared.  “[T]hey were coordinating in terms of what should be reported on Facebook and what shouldn’t be,” she said. “Facebook took down many posts about the origins of COVID-19.” 

DeSantis slammed Facebook’s fact-checking system. “What they censored was actually true. They called it a conspiracy theory if you said this may have leaked from the lab,” he said. “They were also censoring, around the same time last year, any criticisms of lockdowns. And we know now lockdowns didn’t work.”

DeSantis specifically targeted free market-oriented defenders of Big Tech:

So, you often hear people say, ‘Hey, these are private companies. They can do what they want. Yadda, yadda, yadda.’ But here’s an example of working with Fauci, where Facebook, you could argue, is essentially acting as an arm of the state, because they're, they’re suppressing what the government wants supressed.

He also suggested that America’s political system has never handled a foe like Big Tech before: “I think this issue with Big Tech is unlike anything we’ve seen. They have massive amounts of power. These are monopolies that are much stronger than the monopolies of the early 20th Century. They control, in effect, a handful of companies, a huge percentage of the political speech in this country.”

Facebook’s fact-checking program has also proved to be a source of misinformation.

Facebook said in a May 26 update it would “no longer” censor posts claiming that COVID-19 was “man-made or manufactured.” Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell responded to the change by slamming the “fraudulent” Facebook fact-checker program in a tweet: “We now have PROOF that Facebook's fact-checker program actively suppressed valid debate about the origins of Covid and instead promoted Chinese propaganda.”

Facebook leadership’s credibility has been dragged further through the mud thanks to leaks of Fauci’s emails.

The House Judiciary GOP tweeted an open letter from Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY) condemning Zuckerberg for coordinating with Fauci. The letter declared: “Facebook amplified sources like the World Health Organization—even though such sources have proven to be conflicted and unreliable in the past.” The World Health Organization misinformed nations around the globe that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of COVID-19 as late as Jan. 14, 2020.

Conservatives are under attack. Contact Facebook at 1-650-308-7300 and demand that Big Tech mirror the First Amendment. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.