DeSantis: Big Tech Censorship ‘Doing Damage to Society’

During an appearance on this week’s broadcast of “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News Channel, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) slammed big tech over efforts to censor users.

According to DeSantis, censorship is “doing damage to society.” He accused Facebook of “acting as an arm of the state” because they were suppressing what the government wanted to be suppressed in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

“What they censored was actually true,” DeSantis lamented. “They called it a conspiracy theory if you said this may have leaked from a lab. They were also censoring around the same time last year any criticisms of lockdowns, and we know lockdowns didn’t work. States like Florida that were open were better off for it. And 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 can argue, is essentially acting as an arm of the state because they are suppressing what the government wants suppressed, and so I think this issue with big tech is unlike anything that we have seen.”

He continued, “They have massive amounts of power. These are monopolies stronger 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. And so I think when you have situations, they are not just censoring based on partisanship — obviously, we have seen conservatives be censored, but the most important issues that we have ever addressed — how COVID started, whether lockdowns work — you know they are really doing damage to society.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent