On Thursday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “National Report,” Rep. Russell Fry (R-SC) argued that the main problem with social media censorship is the broad level of censorship discretion Twitter has and the “fickle” way in which it uses it and that this fickle discretion is something that can be used to censor people on the left because people flag tweets constantly.
Co-host Emma Rechenberg asked, “Another star moment, standout from the hearing was when the Democrats’ witness came out, and she claimed that the Trump — members of the Trump White House had reached out to her about censoring a tweet that was sent out by Chrissy Teigen. Is this sort of a both sides of the political aisle issue that we’re facing when it comes to big government reaching out to big tech and overall leading to censorship?”
Fry responded, “I mean, maybe so. But I think at the end of the day, people flag tweets all the time, but really, what, in my mind, is the problem is really the fickle way in which Twitter…had internal chats that said, well, this person technically violated, the standards but we don’t want to be accused of censoring, so when they violate it again, we’ll really hit them hard. I think that’s the problem, when you have that level of discretion in that room [where] there were discussions that are going on about censoring speech. … And then to have the infusion of government agencies, particularly the FBI…I think that’s really the problem here is that level of discretion and that level of internal discussion that was going on about Americans’ own speech on that platform.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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