Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., told Newsmax TV on Friday that if Congress wants to hold technology companies accountable, then it has to decide between repealing tech companies’ liability shield or doing ”exactly what big tech wants.”
Comer said on ”John Bachman Now” that Congress’ talks with tech companies and the recent testimony from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg have been ”very frustrating.”
He said, ”You know, there’s a two schools of thought on how you hold big tech accountable. There’s one school that says obviously, what former President [Donald] Trump would say, and that’s to repeal section 230” of the U.S. code that protects companies from liability for what their users post on their services.
”Then there’s another school that says that’s exactly what big tech wants, because that would put the little guys like Parler at a competitive disadvantage because they can’t afford the legal fees and the settlements that the big giant tech companies like Facebook and Twitter can afford.”
Comer said, ”So, it’s a challenge as to how you hold them accountable if there’s disinformation on social media from the left and the right; but what we’ve seen from big tech, they only care about the disinformation that would benefit Republicans. If it’s disinformation that benefits the Democrats, they’re fine with it.
“So big tech has a problem, Congress has a problem; I don’t think anyone knows what the solution is. We want to hold them accountable, but we don’t want to do something that unintentionally gives them a competitive advantage over another social media startup, or like Parler.”
He added later, ”The thing that we’ve got to make sure is that we don’t do something that unintentionally gives big tech a competitive advantage over more competition, because that’s what we want. They have a monopoly on social media and we want to see competition because that’s what Republicans believe in.”
Comer also remarked that President Joe Biden ”is gonna have to do better on transparency with respect to the border, and it’s very disappointing to see the press give him a free pass. Can you imagine if Donald Trump behaved like that? In a press conference of Donald Trump (if he) didn’t answer questions that the reporters asked, and if Donald Trump didn’t allow the press corps to be in the detention centers on the border, they would be lighting him up at that press conference; but instead, everyone just sat there and waited until their turn to be called on.”
Source: Newmax
