During yesterday’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on social media censorship, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) argued that conservatives are not censored on social media, because far-left Media Matters says they aren’t.
Yesterday during a hearing before the Committee on the Judiciary titled “Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) claimed that there is no bias against conservatives on social media, and that the Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe do not censor conservatives. A clip of Hirono’s statement can be found on C-Span here.
Hirono addressed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating: “Mr. Zuckerberg, for the second time in three weeks, you’ve been called before the Senate Committee so my Republican colleagues can beat you up over claims that your platforms are supposedly biased against conservatives. The fact of the matter is that these allegations are completely baseless.”
Hirono pointed to the success of conservative media on social media as examples of a lack of censorship, and cited Media Matters as her source for proof that social media does not have an anticonservative bias, stating:
Everyone who has systematically looked at the content of social media from Media Matters to the CATO Institute to former Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) has found absolutely no evidence of anti-conservative bias and data from Crowd Tangle show that far-right content from the likes of Fox News, Ben Shapiro, and Dan Bongino dominates the daily top-10 most engaged pages on Facebook.
So all of these allegations about the fact that you hire, or all of your employees are left-of-center, is relevant of nothing, certainly not relevant on some sort of anti-conservative bias in terms of your content moderation. So, the way I see it, this hearing is a transparent effort by my Republican colleagues to work the refs and unfortunately, in my view, it’s working.
Last year Politico reported that Facebook’s audit of claims of bias had received harsh criticism from both sides of the political spectrum and that an eight-page report by former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) did not come to a definitive conclusion about where bias exists on Facebook’s platform but “appears designed to quell mounting accusations by GOP leaders, including President Donald Trump.”
Hirono’s full statements were tweeted by KTTH Radio host Jason Rantz and can be seen below:
Far-left Democrat Senator Mazie Hirono (HI) claims that there is no bias against conservative users on social media because far-left Media Matters says so and complains leftist publications do not do as well as conservative publications. pic.twitter.com/uZ0b6jKmeo
— (((Jason Rantz))) on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) November 17, 2020
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at [email protected]
