Social media CEOs appear not to be getting the message about straightening up their platforms, and bipartisan reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act may be in the offing, Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., tells Newsmax TV. The CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google were grilled at a congressional hearing Thursday over their roles in everything from censorship of conservatives to helping facilitate the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.
Carter, appearing later that evening on “Spicer & Co.,” told host Sean Spicer that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey have faced Congress before, though it was Google parent Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai’s first appearance before lawmakers. And, Carter noted, they appear to have learned little.
“I did my best and other members of the committee did their best to explain to them, ‘Look we don’t want to have to regulate you, and you don’t want us to have to regulate you,'” he said. “‘You don’t want the federal government to have to regulate you. However, if you don’t clean this up, if you don’t clear it up, we’re gonna be forced to do that.'”
As a conservative, Carter said he really doesn’t want to have the federal government interfere as he believes it will stifle innovation.
“However, we gave them fair warning,” Carter said, “and I’ll be quite honest with you, I don’t think they get it.”
Democrats seemed just as upset as Republicans at Thursday’s hearing, he said, though perhaps for different reasons. And that could spell trouble for the platforms.
Former President Donald Trump was a proponent of eliminating Section 230 protections that social media platforms currently enjoy that shield them from liability from things said online by their users. President Joe Biden, too, has suggested getting rid of the protections.
“I think it’s coming, and I think it’s inevitable that we are going to have to do something,” Carter said, “that they’re going to be changes. And I just don’t see it being good from the viewpoint of having the federal government in it.”
Carter said he sees a “clash forthcoming” on the issue, but it won’t be good for the platforms. “They’re out of control and they’re suppressing conservative voices. There’s no question about that, and they become a platform for illicit use,” he said.
Carter quizzed Zuckerberg on coyotes using Facebook for border smuggling. The congressman said he was not satisfied with Zuckerberg’s answer that Facebook was looking into it.
At the hearing, Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., raised the long-running conservative issue that Twitter, Facebook and Google are biased against conservative viewpoints and censor material based on political or religious viewpoints.
Scalise highlighted Twitter’s blocking of a New York Post article on Hunter Biden, which CEO Jack Dorsey said was a mistake that the company corrected within 24 hours. Dorsey added that the content of the article wasn’t the issue, but an imperfect application of the platform’s ”hacked materials” policy.
”We make mistakes and our goal [is] to correct them as quickly as possible and in that case we did,” Dorsey said. Scalise asked if anyone in Twitter’s ”censoring department” was held accountable.
”Well, we don’t have a censoring department,” Dorsey replied.
Committee chair Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said, ”The time for self-regulation is over. It’s time we legislate to hold you accountable.”
Referencing the Jan. 6 riot, Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., said the attack ”started and was nourished on your platforms.”
The Associated Press contributed.
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Source: Newmax
