Senator Josh Hawley spoke up against the tech giants and accused them of silencing conservatives. He said that the US Government must make amends to Section 230 which is providing ‘immunity’ to these ‘Big Tech’ companies. However, his proposed solution would end up actually being worse for conservatives.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) has been voicing his concerns about companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter silencing conservatives ever since he was a candidate for Senator. This time, he spoke about the ‘Anti-Conservative’ bias of these companies at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)
“Google and Facebook should not be a law unto themselves. They should not be able to discriminate against conservatives,” said Hawley. Rightly so.
But, according to Senator Hawley, the American Government must make amends to Section 230, which the senator calls a “sweetheart deal” between the tech giants and the US Government.
Section 230 provides the legal framework for free-speech to exist on the Internet. According to this section, when anyone uses these Internet platforms to speak anything that can be deemed punishable or illegal, then the person speaking or expressing those views is punishable and accountable, not the platform.
This section helps in making sure that the Internet exists the way it does. So by amending this section, the repercussions can be undesirable for the internet community on the whole.
As a matter of fact, if the speech on the Internet is subject to policing, then it will get increasingly difficult for conservatives to express themselves as well. When the WSJ’s Kimberley Strassel highlighted the same, the Senator did not respond.
This isn’t the first time the Senator spoke about this issue. Last year, before he was elected, this is what he said in an interview:
“My worry is these companies are increasingly censoring. I mean they are censoring conservatives, they are censoring based on political viewpoint. My question is, should they really be getting this special immunity from the government if they’re also going to act like censors? I think we need to take a hard look at that.”
Apart from Senator Hawley, there are few more people in the White House who share the same perspective about the Section 230. While amending certainly won’t do conservatives any favors, it will definitely have a punishing impact on the tech giants.
