Josh Hawley And Mollie Hemingway Discuss Holding Big Tech Accountable For Censorship

2 days ago

At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) spoke to Mollie Hemingway about the "censorship industrial complex."

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript

Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

00:03It's a nice title for you to have.

00:04It's good to get to be on this committee with you.

00:07Thanks for convening this hearing.

00:09Let's take a look here at something that Facebook,

00:11Meta, whatever, something that they've said,

00:15Mark Zuckerberg in particular said,

00:17it was reported in 2021,

00:20senior officials from the Biden administration,

00:21including the White House repeatedly pressured our,

00:23this is Zuckerberg speaking,

00:25pressured our teams for months

00:27to censor certain COVID-19 content,

00:29including humor and satire,

00:30expressed a lot of frustration with our teams

00:32when we didn't agree.

00:34Ultimately, it was our decision

00:36whether or not to take the content down.

00:40Now, the point that I want to get at,

00:42and maybe I'll start with you, Ms. Hemingway,

00:45because you and your outlet were a target of a lot of this

00:47and were censored left, right, center.

00:49You personally were censored.

00:51Don't you think that Facebook needs to be held accountable

00:55for their role in all of this?

00:57I mean, so Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg says,

01:00oh, you know, gosh, they were so mean to us,

01:02the Biden people, they threatened us,

01:04and they did, Biden did.

01:06Was that unconstitutional?

01:08I think it was.

01:09This is why that Supreme Court case

01:11that we've been talking about today,

01:12the Missouri case is so, so significant.

01:14But isn't it also true that as Zuckerberg himself says

01:18in the statement, it was their decision, they owned it.

01:21And truthfully, Facebook and others have a pattern

01:24of censoring long before this,

01:26the Hunter Biden laptop story,

01:27they gleefully, willfully censored on their own.

01:30They have been avid participants

01:33in this censorship campaign.

01:35Would you agree with that, Ms. Hemingway?

01:36Yes, Mark Zuckerberg, who spent nearly $450 million

01:40in the 2020 election to control the outcome there,

01:44has recently done a few little things like saying,

01:46oh, I was sort of pressured to do this censorship,

01:49or, oh, I'll give a million dollars

01:51to the inauguration committee,

01:52as if this in any way makes up

01:54for the campaign of censorship that he was engaged in,

01:57which was probably valued even more than the money

01:59he gave to the election,

02:01to censor and silence voices like mine and my publication,

02:05because we said things on all sorts of topics

02:07that were at odds with what he wanted,

02:09whether that's the radical trans agenda,

02:12how elections should be run,

02:13how to respond to the COVID pandemic,

02:15all sorts of topics where in a free society,

02:18you should have free and open debate.

02:19And he worked very hard to keep that from happening.

02:22So I find these statements kind of interesting,

02:24but they nowhere near deal with the agency

02:28that he had on this,

02:29and how much power he has as the head of Facebook.

02:34Yeah, I'm glad you just used the word power,

02:35because that's a big part of this story, isn't it?

02:37Companies like Facebook, Meta,

02:39have enormous structural power

02:41that Mark Zuckerberg has spent, to your point,

02:43he has spent billions of dollars amassing.

02:46He has worked to destroy competitors

02:48who might break that power up,

02:50challenge that power in any way.

02:52He has used that power to stifle competition.

02:54He's used it to stifle views he doesn't like.

02:57This is a textbook example of what happens

03:00when a monopoly that has a political agenda,

03:02in this case, a very hard edged political agenda for years,

03:06when they use that monopoly

03:08in order to try to control other competitors,

03:10and also to try to control the information

03:13that flows to the American people.

03:14Do I have that right, do you think?

03:16Yes, and the political system itself,

03:18which had previously been so supportive of him,

03:22and the work that he did to silence, again,

03:23not just in the election sphere,

03:26but those journalistic voices

03:27that were countering his preferred policy objective.

03:30That's just terrific,

03:31and you are perfectly placed to talk about that,

03:33and to bring this to light.

03:34I think it's so vital that we don't lose sight

03:37of the role that these massive companies,

03:39and there's just a few of them,

03:40I mean, it's Google, it's Meta,

03:43that the control that they have amassed,

03:46and that they have used to try and dictate, frankly,

03:49what Americans can see,

03:50and we know in the case of Google,

03:51we've had testimony in this committee,

03:53and subcommittees before,

03:54Google has rigged their search results

03:56to try and influence independent voters,

03:58and try to sway elections for years,

03:59and not just in this country.

04:00They've done it in other countries.

04:01They've done it in Australia.

04:03These are massive monopoly corporations

04:06that have political agendas

04:07that have been using their market power

04:10to try and influence.

04:12Actually, that's not strong enough

04:14to try and control outcomes in our political system.

04:18That is a problem,

04:19and I would just submit,

04:21until we deal with their power,

04:23this problem is gonna persist.

04:24Thank you all for being here.

04:25Mr. Chairman, thank you for having this great hearing.

04:28Thank you, and that will conclude the hearing.

04:30I wanna thank the witnesses for being here.

04:31Thanks for your testimony.

Josh Hawley And Mollie Hemingway Discuss Holding Big Tech Accountable For Censorship

Category

Transcript

Recommended