Senate Democrats Demand Big Tech Companies Censor

Senate Democrats Demand Big Tech Companies Censor Americans Before Election
Frank Bergman
Sep 25, 2024

A group of Senate Democrats has launched a new effort demanding that Big Tech companies crack down on free speech by censoring the American people ahead of the critical November elections.

Fearing a drubbing in the looming elections, Democrat senators led by Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) demanding that social media platforms neuter the speech of the American people before they cast their ballots.

The group also includes Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR).

The Democrats sent a letter to “11 of the largest and most popular social media and encrypted chat companies in the U.S.”

They are “calling for increased resources toward combatting 2024 U.S. election administration and certification disinformation.”

The group of Democrats sent the letter to Google, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), TikTok, X, Reddit, Snapchat, Amazon, Discord, Signal, Telegram, and Apple.

They are demanding information on how the companies plan to “de-amplify and/or remove election disinformation (whether created using AI or not) and/or user accounts who spread this disinformation, when in violation of their policies,” according to the group’s press release.

They also want major platforms to amplify what they deem to be “official election information.”

The private companies are also being ordered to increase their “2024 election safety team.”

These “safety teams” must be cracking down on speech in the ten most commonly spoken languages on the platforms, the senators demand.

The move has been met with a backlash from free speech advocates, however.

In a statement, Heritage Action for America Executive Vice President Ryan Walker said:

“Senate Democrats are once again colluding with Big Tech to shut down opposing viewpoints, spread disinformation, and conduct election interference, as we know they did during COVID and with Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“It’s sad — but not surprising — that Democrats would rather restrict information and free speech than defend their ideas and lies publicly.

“Americans should keep this in mind when they make their voices heard at the ballot box in November, where — to Democrats’ dismay — they can’t be censored.”

Recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta admitted his platforms were used to help censor Covid information and interfere in the 2020 election on behalf of the Democrats.

Meta is the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

Zuckerberg made the confession in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, writing:

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.

“Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.”

“I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he added.

“I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

“We’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” Zuckerberg concluded.

However, as Slay News reported, Zuckerberg declared shortly after writing the letter that conservatives only have themselves to blame if they are censored by left-wing “fact-checkers” on his platforms.

If Big Tech refuses to censor Americans, the Democrat senators claim that the companies “will suppress voter participation, sow doubt in U.S. election processes, and incite political violence.”