Conservatives need to reduce the number of pending Big Tech Reform bills and make one or two pieces that will be popular if Republicans are elected.
That’s according to American Principles Project (APP) Policy and Government Affairs Director Jon Schweppe, who spoke yesterday during a Media Research Center Big Tech briefing to congressional staffers.
“There are a lot of ways to skin the cat,” said Schweppe, who was speaking at the Conservative Partnership Institute on Capitol Hill. “We’ve got to make sure we do it the right way. We’re only going to get one or two bites at this apple.”
APP has said Big Tech reform legislation must require Facebook and Twitter to unconditionally allow former President Donald Trump on their platforms, prevent tech companies from interfering in future elections, and require platforms to greenlight conservative advocacy of political positions that “depart from politically correct orthodoxy,” according to a policy blueprint APP released in July.
“The one that everyone’s running into right now – we’ve all seen it – you cannot say on Twitter that Lia Thomas is a dude,” Schweppe said.
He was referencing a transgender swimmer who won the NCAA Division I women’s 500-yard freestyle.
Rep. Greg Steube’s (R-FL) Curbing Abuse and Saving Expression in Technology (CASE-IT) Act is the active bill most aligned with APP’s framework, Schweppe said.
The bill would strip market-dominant Big Tech companies’ unconditional immunity from civil liability, providing legal immunity only if these companies moderate content in line with the First Amendment, the APP noted in a positive vote recommendation for the legislation.
The CASE-IT Act would also give Americans a private right to legal action to ensure Big Tech companies don’t censor speech protected under the First Amendment in the public square. According to APP the bill will also prevent liability being extended to companies that enable illicit sexual contact between adult and minors, as well as to those who contribute to illegal online material.
WIRED recently reported that Facebook allowed unrestricted propagation of child exploitation content, and even groups on the platform.
As platforms apparently permit illicit content to fester, Big Tech censorship continues to take many forms, MRC staff writer/researcher/video editor Tierin-Rose Mandelburg explained during the MRC Capitol Hill event.
Mandelburg explained that Big Tech has many methods to silence speech.
“Big Tech censorship is the left’s newest and most aggressive weapon,” she said. “It’s extremely biased, and it interferes with what information we are and are not granted access to.”
Mandelburg asked people who were censored for stories to be shared using the CensorTrack Contact Form.
CensorTrack, an MRC database which tracks social media censorship instances is called CensorTrack. Over 3,500 cases have been logged into the database since its inception in March 2020.
“When someone gets censored, it’s not just that individual or that entity,” MRC Free Speech Managing Editor Michael Morris said during the event. “It’s anyone that wants to have a conversation or communication with that post, or with that individual’s speech.”
Conservatives under attackGet in touch with your representative and insist that they make Big Tech accountable for the First Amendment.
About Post Author
