In her latest campaign video, 2020 presidential candidate and free speech advocate Tulsi Gabbard has spoken out against online censorship and said that the big tech monopolies need to be broken up to protect people’s right to speak freely online.
In the video, Gabbard says that American people have historically been able to express their opinions and ideas without fears of censorship or punishment. She then discusses how the changes in technology over the last couple of decades have allowed a small number of big tech corporations to control American people’s access to information.
Gabbard specifically calls out Google and Facebook and describes how they have banned controversial voices for expressing views that these corporations don’t approve of. She also highlights Google’s pattern of silencing users, even when they don’t violate the rules.
She finishes by calling for the breakup of big tech monopolies to defend both democracy and free speech online:
“This concentration of power and influence is a direct threat to our democracy, which is why I’ve taken action against Google, and will continue to advocate for breaking up these tech monopolies and ending their power to undermine our freedom of speech. We all must fight to protect and preserve the fundamental freedoms that make America the greatest nation on earth.
So I’m calling upon you and all Americans to join me in this fight, whether we’re progressives or conservatives, left or right. If we do not stand united in this struggle to protect our freedoms, we all lose.”
This video and Gabbard’s recent decision to take legal action against Google for infringing on her free speech has positioned her as the top Democratic presidential candidate when it comes to defending free speech online. Very few of the other candidates have mentioned online censorship at all and those that have raised the issue have a very inconsistent stance.
Gabbard’s announcement comes as big tech is facing mounting antitrust pressure from various regulatory bodies from around the world including the US Department of Justice (DOJ) which opened a broad big tech antitrust review last week.
