Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that social media company chief executives should be held accountable if hate speech is not monitored and removed on their platforms.
Discussing the investigation into the mass shooting in a Buffalo grocery store, Hochul said, “I want to know what people knew and when they knew it and calling upon law enforcement as well as our social media platforms. The CEOs of those companies need to be held accountable and assure all of us that they’re taking every step humanly possible to be able to monitor this information. How these depraved ideas are fermenting on social media – it’s spreading like a virus now. The white supremacy manifestos – the white supremacy concepts of replacement theory where they’re concerned and now taking to the streets in places like Charlottesville and others, motivated by this idea that immigrants and Jews and blacks are going to replace whites. And that is spreading through social media platforms that need to be monitored and shut down the second these words are espoused out there in these platforms.”
She continued, “There’s not enough monitoring because clearly, this information was out there. Don’t they have a responsibility? I know it’s a huge, vast undertaking, but these companies have a lot of money, they have resources, they have technology. Keywords show up. They need to be identified. Someone needs to watch this and to shut it down the second it appears.”
Hochul added, “We will protect the right to free speech, but there is a limit. There is a limit to what you can do, and hate crime and hate speech is not protected.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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