Marsha Blackburn: Big Tech Needs a ‘Cop on the Beat’ to Rein in Censorship

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told Breitbart News Daily on Tuesday that big tech needs a “cop on the beat” to rein in big tech censorship.

Breitbart News Daily host and Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow asked Blackburn about big tech’s “increasing power and influence” during the coronavirus pandemic. Marlow said he was “deeply concerned” about Silicon Valley’s rising influence during a pivotal election year, noting that he has personally as well as anecdotally heard of “huge suppression” of Breitbart News stories on Google, as well as Facebook and Twitter cracking down on conservative thought.

Marlow noted that these “Masters of the Universe” could “swing an election” with their vast control over the Internet.

Blackburn noted that the rise of big tech and conservative censorship “doesn’t get the ‘column inches’ if you will, that other things are getting.”

She continued, noting, “You have Twitter issue a statement that they are going to take down things that are tagged stories and posts, even by politicians for things they, Twitter, the Masters of the Universe, think that are not factual, and here you go with all of these techies that have a liberal bent, and they are sitting out there in their own little universe, and we don’t like that so we will flag that.”

Blackburn contended that Congress needs to pass her Browser Act to address the problem of conservative censorship. The Browser Act would require Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast and Verizon, as well as content providers such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, to obtain users’ consent before collecting and selling their information for marketing. The Browser Act would also prevent social media companies from blocking users should the user decide not to consent to a tech company’s collection of his or her private data.

“That is completely inappropriate; it’s why we need the Browser Act,” Blackburn said. “It is why we need to continue this; it is why I am staying on this issue and pushing to make certain tech has less power that we have one set of rules for the entire internet ecosystem and that we have more accessibility.”

Blackburn said that if big tech wants to serve as the public square, then there should be a “cop” to rein in big tech.

“If these people want to say that they are the modern public square, the public square has to have a cop on the beat. And they are the ones who will rein in big tech and others when there are bad actions,” she said.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 A.M. to 9:00 A.M. Eastern.