Harmeet Dhillon Appears on Fox News’ ‘Tucker Carlson’ To Discuss Conservatives Battle Censorship
According to Dhillon:
I actually agree with Nigel. It is way past time for us to do that, and what Nigel is talking about is that these social media companies are all hiding behind the Communications Decency Act, section 230, which gives him safe harbor, gives them immunity from being sued if they act as a platform, not as a publisher. The minute they become a publisher and sensor what they do and what they don’t, just like a magazine, just like “Newsweek” or whatever, they can be held liable just like those publications. Now, what these social media platforms have done, is they have absolutely, with their digital advertising, sucked the life out of traditional journalism so that the traditional journalism outlets are on their last legs, they’re teetering into extinction, and they’re in the places where they actually can get sued if they do defamation, if they publish libel, they can be held liable, but these other platforms cannot. So between their market power, which I think is something that the DoJ should look at with antitrust regulation, and with their frankly false advertising to being open to everybody, which Twitter promises, Facebook promises and YouTube to a certain degree promises, although they don’t pretend to do that anymore. They are violating the law. So, setting aside the First Amendment, I agree with you this is not a First Amendment issue so much as a breach of contract and issue involving other regulations. Some of the other things that conservatives can do is that we need to have members of Congress look at this communications and decency act issue, pass the legislation, but we already have some government regulations in place that could help us. We have the federal trade commission, we have the federal communications commission. They could both take a hand in looking at the uneven application of the rules to these different consumers.
Dhillon Discusses Conservative Battle with Censorship on FOX from Harmeet Dhillon on Vimeo.
Of course I’m concerned, and frankly government involvement as a conservative is a last resort, but sometimes it is necessary. So for example, we have doctrines that require equal access to certain platforms. For example you have Facebook censoring Elizabeth Heng’s ads when that Democrat, the incumbent is not censored. That is, to me, virtually an in-kind contribution by the platform to one side over the other, we can’t have that in our system under our current laws. I’m not saying new laws, I’m just saying apply the current laws to the situation, so there’s that. The other thing is that conservatives can fight back in the courts, or as you say, we are the content, but I’m afraid it’s a little naive to say that. Unfortunately, we’ve had many years of American consumers acting like sheep. They think that Google is free. And now we are in chains. Now they control our voices.
