Ahead of Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) emphasized the importance of holding the two social media giants “accountable” for the censorship of conservatives on their platforms. This comes as Twitter has been inserting a disclaimer on Trump’s tweets about the election, and Facebook has deleted pro-Trump groups fighting the election results.
Lee told Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom” that Facebook and Twitter are engaging in “deceptive trade practice” by claiming they are politically unbiased but still suppressing conservative voices.
“The more we can see that these big social media platforms are offering one service and providing another — in other words, they’re claiming that they’re politically unbiased, that they’re not putting their thumb on the scale between one side of the political spectrum and the other, and so they lure their customers in thinking they’ll have an unbiased experience,” Lee outlined Tuesday. “In practice, this is not how it works. In practice, what they are doing is steadily putting their thumb on the left side of the scale. Now, that’s a problem. That’s a deceptive trade practice, and they need to be held accountable for that. I predict that they will be.”
“I want them to offer the service that they claim they are going to be offering to their customers. When their customers get on one of these platforms, they expect to get both sides. They expect both sides will be treated fairly. And that’s not what is happening. That’s a deceptive trade practice,” he later added.
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
