Donald Trump Jr. warned in an article for the Hill, Sunday, that Big Tech companies could soon construct a communist-style social credit system if “left unchecked.”
In the article, titled “Conservatives face a tough fight as Big Tech’s censorship expands,” Trump Jr. claimed that the “right to freely engage in public discourse through speech is under sustained attack, necessitating a vigorous defense against the major social media and internet platforms.”
Listing Facebook and Twitter’s use of shadowbans, YouTube’s demonetization, and Instagram’s censorship, Trump Jr. declared, “If it can happen to me, the son of the president, with millions of followers on social media, just think about how bad it must be for conservatives with smaller followings and those who don’t have the soapbox or media reach to push back when they’re being targeted?”
“Silicon Valley lobbyists have splashed millions of dollars all over the Washington swamp to play on conservatives’ innate faith in the free-market system and respect for private property,” he continued. “Even as Big Tech companies work to exclude us from the town square of the 21st century, they’ve been able to rely on misguided conservatives to carry water for them with irrelevant pedantry about whether the First Amendment applies in cases of social media censorship.”
Trump Jr. then proclaimed, “It’s high time other conservative politicians started heeding [Sen. Josh] Hawley’s warnings, because the logical endpoint of Big Tech’s free rein is far more troubling than conservative meme warriors losing their Twitter accounts. As we’re already starting to see, what starts with social media censorship can quickly lead to banishment from such fundamental services as transportation, online payments and banking.”
“Left unchecked, Big Tech and liberal activists could construct a private ‘social credit’ system — not unlike what the communists have nightmarishly implemented in China — that excludes outspoken conservatives from wide swaths of American life simply because their political views differ from those of tech executives,” he warned, adding, “There is no conservative principle that even remotely suggests we are obligated to adopt a laissez-faire attitude while the richest companies on earth abuse the power we give them to put a thumb on the scale for our political enemies.”
In February, Instagram deleted a post from Trump Jr. about actor Jussie Smollett’s hate crime hoax, and Instagram users have also reported being unable to like posts from Trump Jr. and his father, President Trump.
In December, Trump Jr. described Big Tech bias as “pretty disgusting,” and declared, “I think it shows, and says what everyone already knows, that these are incredibly biased platforms, and they’re using their incredible power to influence people from a very young age. You know, they’re doing that, they’re pretending it’s not happening. It’s happening. Anyone with a brain sees it’s happening. And so, it’s pretty disgusting to see it, and frankly, there should be consequences.”
Trump Jr. also warned last month that if Americans don’t fight back against Big Tech censorship now, they’ll never get a chance again.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter, or like his page at Facebook.
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