In the wake of big terror attacks around the world, Big Tech, such as Twitter or Facebook, are regularly being called out as responsible in some way, for any content policing they may or may not have done, any one week.
On June 26, a hearing in the House Homeland Security Committee will hear statements from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, best representatives.
Bloomberg Law reports that a number of top Facebook policy officers will testify.
The report recalls that most influential global social media platforms pledged after the tragic New Zealand terrorist attack – that targeted two local mosques, killing more than 50 people.
It meant that companies like Twitter and Facebook signed the Christchurch call which was meant to prevent terrorists from uploading extremist content online, and to increase transparency around tech companies’ algorithms and the detection and removal of such content.”
Big Tech giants were quick to sign onto this call, including Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and YouTube, along with European governments such as the UK, Germany, France, Norway, Spain, and Sweden.
The United States, wary of any slippery slope that could lead to restriction start super nice there, but in reality lead to a degradation of free speech, declined to sign the call.
In fact, there are US conservative politicians who have long accused the mainstream media of suppressing free speech.
Thus in June, Republican Senator Josh Hawley introduced “the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act.”
The draft is aimed at working against any further censorship of conservative figures and their free speech online.
The bill makes the special legal immunity offered by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act conditional based upon whether they properly behave as neutral platforms.
