Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee simultaneously claimed big tech bias and censorship doesn’t exist while demanding more crackdowns on first amendment-protected content.
The hearing, organized by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) around the topic of big tech censorship, saw representatives from Facebook and Twitter answer questions about political bias on their platforms. Google, subject to numerous recent exposés including confirmation of President Trump’s allegation that it manipulates search rankings, declined to send a high-level spokesperson to the hearing.
Democratic senators on the committee, apparently oblivious to mounting evidence of big tech bias, insisted (as their colleagues in the House have done before) that tech censorship is a fantasy imagined by conservatives.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), who spoke after Sen. Cruz’s opening statements, set the stage for Democrat narrative-spinning.
“There are many areas where the Senate should be conducting oversight of the tech industry. Baseless allegations of anti-conservative bias is not one of them” said Sen. Hirono.
The Senator went on to complain that tech companies were too hands-off in their approach to content.
“YouTube is full of misleading and outright false information about vaccines that has put the public at risk. The alt-right continues to use Twitter to organize and spread hate.”
“Each of the companies that will be testifying here this morning failed to contain the spread of the videos of the mosque shooting in New Zealand, videos that can still be found on these platforms. These are just a few of the real and serious issues we could discuss about the tech industry.”
Sen. Hirono went on to cite far-left smear machine Media Matters’ claim that anti-conservative bias on big tech platforms “simply does not exist.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called questions about the level of progressive bias in the workforces of Silicon Valley companies “unfair,” suggesting that the allegations of biased workforces — including Mark Zuckerberg’s acknowledgment at a previous hearing that Silicon Valley is an “extremely left-leaning place” had no evidence to back them up.
“The kind of views that have been elicited here, and maybe of Mark Zuckerberg as well, about Silicon Valley are very much emotional, non-fact based, non-scientific reactions.”
“In fact, compared to other parts of the country, Silicon Valley may not be all that left-leaning. Would you agree?”
The representatives from Twitter and Facebook indicated agreement with Sen. Blumenthal, with both tech spokesmen insisting they have lots of Republican friends.
Sen. Blumenthal’s allegation that there is no data on the leanings of Silicon Valley employees is factually false. In 2016, Crowdpac found that over 90 percent of donations made by tech industry employees went to Hillary Clinton. This year’s spending is much the same – analysis of 125,000 employees of Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft by far-left tech news magazine Wired again found the vast majority of donations going to Democrat candidates.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter, Gab.ai and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to allumbokhari@protonmail.com.
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