Josh Hawley: Facebook Board’s Decision to Uphold Trump Ban Proves Need for Antitrust

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said in an interview Wednesday that the Facebook oversight board’s decision to uphold the social media giant’s ban against former President Donald Trump proves the need to use antitrust against the company.

Hawley slammed Facebook after its oversight board, a body Facebook created to review its content decisions, upheld the company’s decision to ban Trump following the January 6 riots.

The Missouri conservative said that the oversight board’s decision proves the need to use antitrust to rein in Facebook’s control over free speech.

Hawley said, “Facebook is a private company. They are a monopoly. The whole reason that their decisions matter is because they have monopoly power, and until we get serious about confronting their monopoly, they can try to distract us with this board or that self-policing measure or whatever, and it’s not going to matter until we do something about their monopoly.”

Hawley added that Americans have become increasingly reliant on these few big tech companies because they have become monopolistic.

“People rely on them because they’re monopolies. This is what happens when you have just a few companies control all digital speech in America as a Facebook, Twitter, Google through its social media platforms, really does and do. I think that what we’ve got to do is take steps to introduce competition, to give consumers power back so that we have more speech,” he added.

Hawley said that many Senate Democrats have pushed big tech companies to crack down on free speech on their platforms.

Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.