Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) joined a chorus of leftist voices begging Big Tech to censor more aggressively, hearkening back to the days of even more aggressive content moderation.
Warner went after X and TikTok for their lack of cooperation with the government before complaining to MSNBC Anchor Katy Tur that most major social media companies had supposedly censored content less aggressively since 2020. Warner expressed his disappointment with this approach during the Thursday edition of Andrea Mitchell Reports.
“Frankly, TikTok in terms of trying to work with the government on this misinformation, disinformation, they and X are two of the entities that are least involved in our effort,” Warner said, “But let me also be clear. Every one of the social media companies—Facebook, Instagram, YouTube—they have all cut back on their own content moderation efforts from where we were in 2020. I’m disappointed in that.”
Due to the Twitter Files and confessions by Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Americas now know that the government frequently colluded with Big Tech to censor disfavored content.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted on Aug. 25 that the federal government pressured Facebook into censoring content related to Hunter Biden’s laptop and COVID-19. The Twitter Files have shown that the government placed similar pressure on Twitter over a host of COVID-19-related topics. In all, no less than seven federal agencies have been involved in colluding with Big Tech to censor speech.
Finally and most infamously, former President Donald Trump was banned from nearly every major social media app in January 2021.
While Warner was not specific, other leftists have been far more direct about precisely what censorship they miss. CNN Technology Reporter Brian Fung complained about how social media platforms, especially X under owner Elon Musk, have purportedly let Americans speak their minds. On Oct. 21 Fung attacked social media companies for allowing the now-2024 Republican Presidential nominee to use their platforms. He also lamented that X and other social media companies had cracked down on the “trust and safety” teams (making censorship more difficult).
This narrative was also pushed by former CNN host Brian Stelter, who cited Fung’s article in a thread on X. In his own article, Stelter griped, “Social media firms, however, have taken a relatively laissez-faire approach to viral lies and propaganda in recent years. Some earlier efforts to support verified news sources and discourage unverified vitriol have been scuttled in the United States, in part due to pressure campaigns from conservatives who have conflated all discussions of disinformation as pleas for censorship.”
Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
