Conservatives say Big Tech companies, pressured by liberals, are using the Capitol attack to justify the unfair censorship of Republicans and the removal of platforms like Parler.
Nathan Leamer, former adviser to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, said there was a “cabal of reporters, writers, influencers, who generally work at places like MSNBC, the New York Times, and such” who get to decide what is or isn’t allowed on social media and who is or is not censored.
“Through their influence, they have a direct line to those in charge of the moderation practices of Twitter,” said Leamer, who is now a vice president at the Republican strategy firm Targeted Victory.
Since last week’s Capitol riots, almost all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, have announced bans, in some form, of President Trump’s accounts, justified by arguing that they fear he will incite further violence.
Facebook has also decided to censor Trump supporters who are part of the “Stop the Steal” movement that is focused on trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Some Republicans have ascribed political motives to the Big Tech companies’ recent actions.
Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade adviser, told the Washington Examiner that most Big Tech companies have been aggressively moderating certain violent content “as a way of building goodwill, with the Biden administration and Democrats on the Hill, in the hopes of fending off what, until recently, had been a bipartisan challenge to their collusive oligopoly.”
Navarro claims that the combined powers of Big Tech companies, primarily Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and Google, represent a “collusive oligopoly” that is weakening the First Amendment through content moderation.
Although most conservatives disagreed strongly with the Capitol attack last week and acknowledge the role some Republicans played in encouraging it, many see a double standard in how the content created by liberals and conservatives is censored by the Big Tech gatekeepers.
Leamer said there are numerous instances of Democrats spreading falsehoods and contesting elections and statements that could have incited violence but were not censored by social media platforms.
He cited the examples of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claims that Trump was beholden to the Russian government and that the 2016 election was “hijacked,” which were not contested by social media platforms.
Other conservatives point to the lack of consistency or proportionality in how social media platforms have responded to violence from Left-leaning groups.
“The abiding fact is that these platforms have been noticeably silent over the past six months of incredible violence perpetrated by Black Lives Matter and antifa,” Navarro said.
Conservatives said that if an individual or organization was aligned with a liberal agenda, then it was likely to face much less scrutiny from the tech gatekeepers.
Parler, a social media platform popular with conservatives, has been decimated in the past week by aggressive actions taken by Apple, Google, and Amazon, which have brought the platform to a standstill.
The three tech giants have cut off ties with Parler because they claim it is not effectively identifying and removing violent content on its platform, following last week’s attack on the U.S. Capitol.
However, no action has been taken against Twitter or Facebook for similar violent content on their platforms. Most Big Tech companies, including Twitter and Facebook, have a lot more Left-leaning employees than conservative ones.
“As long as you’re in Democrats’ good books, then you’re OK — that’s how it feels,” said Casey Mulligan, the former chief economist for Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers.
“If you’re in the club, then there’s no penalty. This way, there’s no equal protection under the law,” said Mulligan, an economist at the University of Chicago.
Navarro, who is one of Trump’s staunchest defenders after the Capitol attack, said Facebook and Twitter banned Trump’s accounts last week as retaliation.
“Zuckerberg, for him, this was revenge in some sense for the Trump campaign using Facebook to win the election in 2016,” said Navarro.
“I think Twitter and Jack Dorsey are a progressive, liberal, multinational company in bed with the Chinese Communist Party,” Navarro added.
Big Tech gatekeepers such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Amazon have justified their censorship and bans as being focused solely on content that could be viewed as an incitement of violence.
Twitter, for example, concluded that the Trump’s tweets last week “are likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on Jan. 6, 2021.” It also noted “plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter” and that those plans have included “a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.”
