In a column at The Hill, Donald Trump Jr. wrote that the political censoring by the tech companies posed a threat to “free speech” and the country’s democracy.
He further highlighted big tech’s blatant censoring of the right, and discussed what he says is the left’s hostility towards free speech and expression that is “edgy, brutal, irreverent, and sometimes downright offensive.”
“For all the platitudes offered by liberal journalists about the free press standing as a cornerstone of democracy, they do not actually have a very good grasp of the concept. The free press that the founders envisioned looked a lot more like the Reddit users who roasted O’Rourke than New York Times writers who misrepresent basic tenets of free speech and demand censorship to protect their friends from online harassment,” Trump Jr wrote.
He further highlighted Instagram’s censoring of both him and his father during September; with regard to this incident, he wrote, “If social media can do that to the president, then no one is safe.”
Trump Jr., has also written about how the Silicon Valley companies were refusing to use the First Amendment for setting the parameters of permitted speech and expression. As “hate speech” has a highly contextual definition, big tech companies are resorting to blatant censorship by setting their own parameters of permitted speech through their Terms of Service.
In the guise of content policy violations, several conservative personalities have been censored by Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for expressing their views, which were ultimately often seen as “hate speech” by these tech monopolies.
Trump Jr., said that big tech poses a “threat” to free speech and that it is increasingly promoting liberal perspectives, leading to a politically biased atmosphere across the internet.
“Technology companies allowed liberal activists to dominate their corporate culture and abuse their power to restrict free speech. If Big Tech keeps kowtowing to this, it might very well soon regret it,” wrote Trump Jr.
In the recent past, Facebook had called for an audit on its speech policies headed by the former Republican Senator Jon Kyl, the results of which were not well-received among the conservatives as it was believed that the audit was neither comprehensive nor exhaustive, and addressed the claims of conservative bias as a “belief” and not a fact.
