By Joseph A. Wulfsohn , Nikolas Lanum
Several GOP lawmakers attending CPAC in Orlando are slamming Big Tech companies for their crackdown of conservatives while allowing Russia to launch a viral campaign in the midst of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., called the double standard “pretty remarkable” since these tech giants “literally allowing individuals doing an actual brutal coup and murdering their neighbors to be on social media.”
“President Trump is blocked, the leadership of Hamas is not. President Trump is blocked, the leadership of Iran is actually not blocked. You’ve got President Trump is blocked, you’ve got leaders in Nicaragua that have led through an actual coup and a transition in their government, and they’re not blocked,” Lankford told Fox News Digital. “Over and over and over again, I can walk you through the world leaders that are brutal dictators that have led an actual coup in their country, and they’re still on social media. President Trump still continues to be able to be blocked on this.”
“This is a preference thing,” Lankford continued. “This goes back to Apple’s guide. Apple, in their guide, their user guide says literally, they don’t allow things on that they consider creepy. It’s a totally subjective piece. Facebook has on there that they don’t allow illegal activity unless it’s illegally crossing the border, then they do allow that. So there’s all this double standard that actually happens. It’s really a subjective issue of the far left folks that are in Silicon Valley. If they like it, they allow it. If they don’t like it, they block it. And they seem to like Hamas, they seem to like these other dictators worldwide, they just don’t like President Trump. So they block him.”
Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., called for regulating Big Tech, touting his own legislation he says “makes complete sense” but not a “single Democrat” has supported it.
“What we will do is we regulate Big Tech, we treat them like a common carrier. That would require them to give nondiscriminatory access,” Hagerty told Fox News Digital. “And if they want to come in and censor, they’re going to have to inexplicitly state the criteria. Today, in Section 230, they’re allowed to come in and have a very broad criteriabecause they use the language that says or otherwise… ‘offensive.’ And they are interpretingthat very broadly to basically say anything that’s conservative is offensive.”
“It’s amazing to me that this is the path that Big Tech seems to choose where authoritarians are welcome to use Big Tech, where the Ayatollah can call for death for America, yet they’ll censor a President of the United States,” Hagerty added.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., similarly took aim at Section 230, which he said was “designed to promote more free speech” and has instead “created a safe haven for Facebook and Twitter” to suppress conservatives.
“Do I think that when somebody invades another country, pulling them down off of as many social media platforms as possible makes sense, of course. But I think the more mundane has to be that when in doubt, free speech should be allowed everywhere. And I’m willing to have reprehensible free speech rather than have less people able to speak their mind,” Issa said.