Facebook should be sued for its political censorship related to the coronavirus and its origins in China, Charles Hurt, Washington Times opinion editor and Breitbart News columnist, said on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow, author of Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption.
Hurt highlighted Facebook’s censorship of analyses and speculation regarding the novel coronavirus’s origins, particularly hypotheses of its origination in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
He remarked, “At the very least Facebook should be sued out of existence for their hand in the cover-up of — trying to cover for — China, [and] their silencing of voices that were constructive voices that were saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got this lab over here that’s doing some really risky stuff. Oh, and by the way, your tax dollars are apparently going to pay for some of this risky research.'”
Facebook markets its political censorship as apolitical removal of “false news” and “misinformation” to “protect people from harmful content.”
Hurt noted the legal immunities afforded to Facebook via its legal designation as an “interactive computer service” in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Breitbart News explained the application of the CDA to Facebook and other “social media” technology companies:
Section 230 gives Big Tech companies immunity from lawsuits arising from user-generated content. If a person is defamed on Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or other big tech platforms like Reddit, those platforms are not legally liable for the content like a traditional publisher might be. This allows social media platforms to host billions of posts from users without a potentially crippling legal risk.
“Facebook wants protection for what gets said on its platform, but they don’t want to have to pay for that,” Hurt said. “What about what you don’t allow on your platform? What about the massive cover-up conspiracy that you led in order to prevent the world from exposing what may have caused the single worst assault on humanity?”
Facebook’s market capitalization is nearly $937 billion.
Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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