French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has joined international leaders in condemning social media’s censorship of conservative voices.
Le Maire, who said he was “shocked” by the decisions of Twitter, Facebook, Apple, and other Silicon Valley companies to ban President Trump in the wake of Wednesday’s siege of Capitol Hill, called Big Tech “one of the threats” to democracy. He called for government regulation of the corporations to stave off a “digital oligarchy.”
“This should be decided by citizens, not by a CEO,” he said. “There needs to be public regulation of big online platforms.”
Le Maire’s comments come as the technology companies are facing international scrutiny in light of their handling of the recent political unrest. Most notably, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the bans represented a “problematic” breach of the “fundamental right to free speech.”
“This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators, not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” a spokesman for Merkel told reporters. “Seen from this angle, the chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the U.S. president have now been permanently blocked.”
Conflict between Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill escalated in the months since the 2020 presidential contest. Earlier this month, Republican lawmakers, with the support of Trump, renewed calls to revoke technology corporations’ immunity under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
Rep. Ted Budd, the North Carolina Republican who introduced the measure, called censorship by social media companies a “national disgrace” and “a threat to the free speech rights of every American.”
“Big Tech companies like Twitter and Facebook have gone too far in suffocating the voices of conservatives across our country,” he said. “If these companies want to continue to receive special legal protection, they should be forced to play by a fair set of rules.”
