Senator and 2020 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said on Wednesday that he supports calls to break up Facebook. The comment is reportedly the first time the senator has addressed the matter since entering the 2020 Democrat presidential campaign.
Sen. Bernie Sanders expressed his support for breaking up Facebook Wednesday on Capitol Hill, citing an “increasingly monopolistic society” that gives big corporations “too much power,” according to a recent report by Politico.
“The answer is yes of course,” said Sen. Sanders in response to a Politico reporter who asked if he would back the calls to break up the big tech company, “We have a monopolistic — an increasingly monopolistic society where you have a handful of very large corporations having much too much power over consumers.”
Several 2020 Democrat presidential candidates have recently shared their thoughts regarding Facebook, with Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) claiming that she believes we should “seriously take a look at that,” and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) suggesting to have federal regulators reverse certain tech mergers, such as Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) has also weighed in on the issue in a recent interview with Joe Rogan, stating that Silicon Valley is throwing First Amendment rights “out the window.”
“They’re trying to get the best of both worlds,” said Rep. Gabbard in response to Rogan’s question about the “private company” argument.
“The fact that they are claiming to say, ‘Hey, this is a free space for open communication for everyone’ while at the same time saying ‘You know, what Joe, I don’t like what you’re saying about this, so we’re going to ban you and whoever your friends are from this conversation,'” added Rep. Gabbard, “I think that’s a big problem.”
According to Politico, Sen. Sanders did not respond to a shouted question about whether he supported breaking up Google and Amazon as well.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo and on Instagram.
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