AG William Barr: Social Media Platforms ‘Engaged in Censorship,’ Acting More Like ‘Publishers’

Appearing Tuesday on the Fox News Channel’s Special Report, Attorney General William Barr judged that social media platforms are “engaged in censorship” and are behaving more like “publishers.”

A transcript is as follows:

BRET BAIER: The president is counting on you and your department to crack down on social media platforms for what he calls “censorship,” including his own tweets. You said, “the law allows these companies to operate and it’s been stretched beyond its original intent.” So you think these firms are somehow censoring the president and his supporters?

ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR: I think there are… clearly these entities are now engaged in censorship. And they originally held themselves out as open forums where people, where the third parties could come and express their views, and they built up a tremendous network of eyeballs. They had a lot of market power based on that presentation. And now they are acting much more like publishers, because they’re censoring particular viewpoints and putting their own content in there to diminish the impact of various people’s views.