Exclusive — Josh Hawley: ‘Big Tech’s Free Ride Is Over’

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Breitbart News Daily on Friday that big tech’s free ride is over and that conservatives are fighting back against censorship and Silicon Valley’s control of the Internet.

Hawley, one of Congress’s most vocal critics of big tech, spoke to Breitbart News Daily guest host Matthew Boyle before Hawley spoke on a panel with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Donald Trump Jr. on how to address big tech.

Hawley said that conservatives have woken up about the dangers of big tech.

“I think big tech’s free ride is over. If you think about just a year ago, big tech was getting by with all of this outrageous behavior, censoring conservatives, taking pro-life voices down off their platforms. Nobody was calling them out. Things have really changed,” he said.

Hawley added that conservatives need to ensure that “big tech doesn’t run our lives and censor our voices.”

Hawley proposed the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act, which would eliminate the legal immunity that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act guarantees big tech companies if the government found that Silicon Valley biased their content moderation practices and algorithms to unfairly censor content on their platforms.

A 2019 survey found that nearly a majority of Americans back Sen. Hawley’s legislation. During a social media summit at the White House last year, President Donald Trump also praised the bill as “very important.”

Hawley said that Silicon Valley’s dominance over the Internet could grant it enough political control to influence the 2020 presidential election against President Trump.

Hawley explained, “I think one of the things that we have to talk about is big tech’s control of the information flow, Matt. They want to control all of the information in this country, all of the communication. We can’t allow that. We can’t allow them to discriminate against conservative voices. This is a huge deal. When they control all of the information in the country, they can choose who loses, who gets their message out. We know that they didn’t want Donald Trump elected in 2016. If they could get by preventing him from getting reelected, they certainly would. We got to stop that, and we got to protect conservatives’ right to speak.”