Hawley: ‘Really Scary’ to Have the Government Tell Tech Companies ‘You Need to Censor’

Thursday on FNC’s “Special Report,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) decried the federal government’s efforts to instruct tech companies who to censor, which he deemed coordination between big government and monopolized big tech.

“Oh, I think it’s scary, Bret,” he said. “I think it’s really scary to have the federal government of the United States, the White House, compiling lists of people, organizations, whatever, and then going to a private company that, by the way, is a monopoly, Facebook, and saying: You need to censor. You need to do something about this. You need to tell these users, these private users on a private company, what they can or cannot say. I mean, I just think that this kind of coordination between big government and a big monopoly corporation, boy, that is scary stuff. And it really is censorship, Bret.”

Hawley likened those activities to a function of a public utility and argued those companies should be broken up to “restore competition.”

“Well, at this point, you really have to wonder how private of companies they are,” Hawley said. “I mean, if you’re taking direction from the federal government, openly coordinating with the federal government, you have got the government saying, we think that this speech ought to be censored, and big tech, if they carry out those instructions, I mean, that looks like they’re starting to operate as a public utility.”

“And there are many people out there who say we ought to just treat them as public utilities,” he continued. “We ought to just regulate these private companies as such. My view is, we ought to break them up and restore competition. But I have to tell you, Bret, their status as independent private companies, looks more and more endangered here. They’re acting like arms of the government. And when they’re monopolies, that’s a big problem.”

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