Former White House strategist Steve Bannon suggested Wednesday that the government should seize the data of large tech companies and put that information in a “public trust.”
“I think you take [the data] away from the companies. All that data they have is put in a public trust. They can use it. And people can opt in and opt out. That trust is run by an independent board of directors. It just can’t be that [these companies are] the sole proprietors of this data,” Bannon told CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter.
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Bannon also attacked the executives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, calling them “sociopaths” and “complete narcissists.”
“These people ought to be controlled, they ought to be regulated,” he said. “These people are evil. There is no doubt about that.”
Bannon’s comments follow President Trump threatening possible regulation of Google. Trump claims the Google search engine is purposely suppressing positives stories about him and conservatives. The tech giant has denied doing so, saying its search algorithms are updated continuously to surface the most relevant results.