The Highwire with Del Bigtree - THE BIG TECH BATTLE FOR FREE SPEECH IS HEATING UP

Episode Date: October 5, 2022

The battle with Big Tech for free speech is heating up! States are passing bills to stop the social media censorship, and legislators are holding investigative hearings, while a recent lawsuit including several State Attorneys General is making headway.#SenRonJohnson #JoshHawley #Facebook #BigTechCensorshipBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Another dark chapter, really, if you will, in the COVID response over the last years was the attempt by government agencies and big tech media as a whole to control the information flow. So we reported, I think, two weeks ago now, that the attorneys generals in Louisiana and Missouri brought forth a suit to hoping to expose who or what in the Biden administration, what agencies were colluding, if at all, with big tech to censor information. And so this came out. They were granted discovery. The court ruled in their favor. They granted discovery. And those emails have been out now. And it shows it shows weekly collusion in the case with Facebook and the CDC on vaccine misinformation. They're meeting weekly to talk about this. They were taking people's accounts at their behest. So now this has reached the committees here. So we have Senator Josh Howley. He is in the Senate Homeland Security Committee. And he brought forth some of the higher ups at TikTok, Twitter, Facebook meta. And he had this to say, take a listen. We had conversations with the CDC, with the World Health Organization, and with other public health organizations, not just in the U.S., but abroad, in order to understand how to help make sure that folks weren't getting information that could cause imminent harm. Fair enough. So you're saying that this was, in fact, company policy to have these kinds of meetings with HHS, with the CDC, with the White House directly that you did engage in this behavior. and you think that it was entirely fine.

Is that your testimony? Senator, I do believe it's appropriate for companies like ours to be in consultation with public health organizations and with government. And you can confirm that things like taking down a private Instagram account and adjusting your policies at the behest of the White House and putting into place misinformation policies at the behest of CDC, that those things you think are appropriate.

This was company policy to do so. Is that fair to say? Senator, I'm not familiar with the Instagram account specifically that you're referencing, but we do know that people expected and hoped from the platforms that we would help them get accurate information about COVID during the unprecedented time, especially at the beginning. Well, isn't there a difference between you as a platform putting forward information and censoring your users at the behest of the White House, the administration more broadly in the CDC? Isn't there a distinction there? We specifically wanted to work with public health experts to understand the relationship between information and behavior. And so we did consult with the CDC, the World Health Organization, and others to understand how the platform policies we built were affecting public health.

Well, you didn't just consult with them to understand how they affected public health. You actually censored on their behalf. I mean, you took these emails, I'm just quoting from a sample of them, which, by the way, had been dismal. closed in litigation. These emails show that you took censorship steps. You took down accounts. You planned misinformation policies. You adjusted your policies at the behest of the United States government. I mean, that's not just some theoretical thing. That's actually targeting your user's speech. But I appreciate your forthrightness, by the way. But you're saying that that was, you think that's fine and that was your policy. Senator, we've been public about our

on COVID misinformation specifically as well as on misinformation generally. And so you think there's nothing, you're not concerned about any of this, nothing that I just read to you. You're not concerned about it at all. Respectfully, Senator, I think the balance of how to protect free expression as well as public safety is a difficult issue. But it's one we're committed to working with outside experts and publishing our work. Well, I appreciate you being so forthright. As I said, this is actually from litigation between the state of Missouri and the state of Louisiana and the federal government. I anticipate that your remarks under oath today are going to be very interesting and helpful of that litigation.

I'll just say this. My view is that the United States government is bound by the First Amendment. They cannot encourage or coerce or incite or collude with a private party to get around the First Amendment, but you've just said to me today that that's basically what they did,

that you coordinated with them repeatedly over a pattern of months and years to adjust and target your speech policies for protected speech at the behest of the United States government. I have to tell you, I've got a big problem with that. And I think all your users should too. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Wow. I mean, I'm so jazzed to be alive at this time in the world, but especially here in the United States of America. This is such a critical, critical time. These, you know, this COVID has revealed so many problems and issues that we're just going to run away like freight trains,

our privacy, you know, our freedom of speech, all of it hanging in the balance. And I get, I do get, I mean, maybe I'm naive, but to listen to Senator Josh Howley, like you get a sense, we have a chance, man. There's actually real politicians, really asking all the right questions, you know, drilling down on whether or not we're going to have a constitution going forward in the future, an amazing back and forth in that testimony right there and inspiring. And what's important, as Senator Hawley said, is that testimony is on record. so that could be used in the legal hearings moving forward, any lawsuits moving forward. So that's also why that's important.

But one of the things in 2021, Biden said at that time was you're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations. And so at that same committee that we just saw Senator Halliatt, we had Senator Ron Johnson as well. And he had some questions there at the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Take a listen. All right. So obviously, this was just, this was published. And they were publishing other similar information. During that time period when President Biden lied to the American public that this was a pandemic of that unvaxed,

and if you got vaccinated, you're not going to go to the hospital, you're not going to be an ICU, and you're not going to die. Well, 63.5% of the people fully vaccinated were dying in England at the exact same time. Why didn't you pull this? Have you ever labeled the President of the United States' comment as misinformation? Have you ever done that? any of you. I'll take that as a no. So again, I just wonder who are the authorities, who do you think you are, to censoring information from eminently qualified doctors who had the courage and compassion to treat COVID patients when the NIH guideline was basically, if you get

test positive for COVID, COVID, go home, be afraid, isolate yourself, don't do anything until you're so sick, we'll send you in the hospital, we'll give you a remdesivir, where we have 1,600 deaths so far, we'll put you on a vent and we'll watch you die. You guys bear a fair amount of responsibility for hundreds of thousands of people not being treated, and I would say probably dying that didn't have to die. Hope you're proud of yourselves. I mean, that's the most important conversation of all. As you are, I mean, how is it? These social media companies aren't sitting and going, well, look, we bet on the wrong horse. I mean, we did listen to CDC.

We felt like that was an important conversation, but they were wrong. They did get it wrong. Where is that conversation? We have to admit they got it wrong. The vaccine, all the people we were censoring saying the vaccine wasn't working, it wasn't effective, ended up being right. All the people were censoring had it right. And the people we were listening to had it wrong.

They were the ones spreading the misinformation. None of these guys, I mean, they would do themselves a huge favor, I would think, in front of that saying, yeah, you know what? It's a really good point. How do we decide who's right? just because they're in authority, because they're the government of the United States and government health officials. I love Ron Johnson. I love how he just doesn't. He's not afraid to just take it all the way there. It's so rare and really beautiful to watch it. So the other portion of this

is states like Texas and Florida have passed bills. They've been signed. They've been put into effect that are saying that in that state, these big tech, like the Googles, the Facebooks, the Twitter, the Twitter, Writers cannot censor people's viewpoints, cannot censor people's discussions. And so those were taken to court immediately. And Texas just had a win on that front. This is the attorney general there, Ken Paxton. He brought this suit. And this is the headline here.

Federal court rules Big Tech has no freewheeling First Amendment right to censor. Of course, they're talking about Bill HB20. This is a bill that Texas big tech platforms can't censor the free speech of viewpoints or expressions. There's been injunction since this thing was signed. by Governor Abbott. In Juncker's going back and forth in circuit court, in district courts. And finally, this is the latest ruling on this,

that's really showing that this thing can move forward. So this will be an interesting test case because it's only state in the United States that's having this done. So a lot of people are saying, well, they may have to just not have Facebook or meta in Texas anymore because the burden's too great. But we also see this in Florida.

The Florida so far legally has the opposite result. This was the headline here from this summer. Governor DeSantis signed their bill, the Stop Social Media Censorship Act into effect and then Judge blocks Florida social media censorship law after big tech sues. So obviously they don't want this thing. And this is all heading to what we're seeing in the Washington Post call, kind of like this monumental battle within the Supreme Court. This is what a lot of legal people are saying. It looks like the future of this conversation. A landmark Supreme Court fight over social media now looks likely. And that's what the

Washington Post is now reporting.