Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) recently made a social media censorship suggestion that seemingly made even the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director, an agency that has flagged many social media posts for censorship, uncomfortable.
Romney made the proposal during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing where Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) had already extensively laid out the FBI’s recent history of social media censorship coercion which the Fifth Circuit found to have likely violated the First Amendment.
But Romney seemed to think the FBI’s current social media censorship activities don’t go far enough and suggested that because some hate groups and terrorists target Jews, the FBI should be doing more to fight “hate” on social media.
Wray appeared to realize that such a proposal rubs up against the First Amendment and told Romney, “Now you’re getting into a legal area that I’m not the expert on.”
He then pivoted away from social media and proposed community outreach to law enforcement as a better solution to the problem.
However, Romney steered the conversation back to social media and insisted that the FBI needs to “reduce the communication of hate across social media” because American citizens “offer various forms of hate.”
This isn’t the first time Romney has made social media censorship suggestions that raise First Amendment concerns. Earlier this year, he argued it should be legal for the government to curb “misinformation” on social media.
