Trump Jr.: Social media giants that censor should lose government protection
- 4 years ago
Donald Trump Jr. expressed his discontent with social media and big tech companies censoring conservatives in an exclusive interview with Zenger News.
He says he supports stripping companies like Facebook and Google of government protections if they discriminate based on a content owner's politics.
“People in the Second Amendment movement, people who are pro-religious-liberty, people who are pro-life,” are “the only people that are actually getting censored,” Trump said.
He added that tech services beyond social media engage in similar practices. For example, he says Trump 2020 campaign emails are sometimes sent to “spam” in a Gmail inbox, while Bernie Sanders campaign emails were visible to recipients.
Asked whether he believes a free-market approach implies preventing government intervention on social media censorship, Trump Jr. pointed out that companies benefit from state protections.
“It's not free-market when these tech companies have many protections from liability from the U.S. government,” he said. “Once they accept those protections and they cede that liability, which could be plenty, and they're getting that benefit from the United States government, they lose the ability to say ‘We can do whatever we want.’”
The president's eldest son spoke to Zenger News in February, at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
This shields social media networks and telecommunication services from being liable for content published or sent by their users.
“It's not free market when you're getting protections from the government,” Trump told Zenger News. “You can't then decide, ‘Well, I only want to protect this class of people.’ If you tried doing that in any other business you'd be destroyed.”
He says he supports stripping companies like Facebook and Google of government protections if they discriminate based on a content owner's politics.
“People in the Second Amendment movement, people who are pro-religious-liberty, people who are pro-life,” are “the only people that are actually getting censored,” Trump said.
He added that tech services beyond social media engage in similar practices. For example, he says Trump 2020 campaign emails are sometimes sent to “spam” in a Gmail inbox, while Bernie Sanders campaign emails were visible to recipients.
Asked whether he believes a free-market approach implies preventing government intervention on social media censorship, Trump Jr. pointed out that companies benefit from state protections.
“It's not free-market when these tech companies have many protections from liability from the U.S. government,” he said. “Once they accept those protections and they cede that liability, which could be plenty, and they're getting that benefit from the United States government, they lose the ability to say ‘We can do whatever we want.’”
The president's eldest son spoke to Zenger News in February, at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
This shields social media networks and telecommunication services from being liable for content published or sent by their users.
“It's not free market when you're getting protections from the government,” Trump told Zenger News. “You can't then decide, ‘Well, I only want to protect this class of people.’ If you tried doing that in any other business you'd be destroyed.”