Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) issued a stark warning on what is to come for Big Tech companies in wake of Facebook and Twitter censoring stories about Hunter Biden's alleged corruption schemes from their platform during a Trump campaign call with reporters on Thursday.
The censorship on Twitter was considered to be the most egregious since it prevents users from tweeting out the link of the Post's stories about Biden, and his father Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, along with preventing users from sharing links in the app's direct message feature. Anyone who had tweeted the link had their accounts locked.
A spokesperson for Twitter said they are blocking the link to the stories because "in line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to block any links to or images of the material in question on Twitter" since users can not use the platform to "to directly distribute content obtained through hacking that contains private information."
"That is not exactly the standards that Big Tech oligarchs apply to every story about Donald Trump over the last five years or to every story about [Supreme Court Justice] Brett Kavanaugh two years ago. And for all those Tech oligarchs who think they can get away with this, I will simply say that winter is coming," Cotton said.
"They have enjoyed total immunity under Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act, that is going to change soon because the millions of Americans, who believe in God, believe in national sovereignty, and believe in the Constitution, will not tolerate these monopolists continuing to dictate the flow of information in this country," he continued. "That is what's at stake in this election."
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Townhall asked Cotton what exactly "winter is coming" meant since problems with potential censorship on social media has been an issue raised by conservatives for a number of years.
Cotton said he and other members of Congress plan to move forward with amending tech companies' legal protections under Section 230, even floating the idea of completely "eliminating" their legal liability under Section 230.
He also pointed to the ongoing investigations into companies to see if they have violated anti-trust laws, "in which can they face severe penalties and potentially being broken up as well. I think the Big Tech oligarchs should be prepared for those actions, and perhaps more, as well."
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said on Thursday that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) plan to issue a subpoena to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for immediate testimony.
"This is election interference and we are 19 days out from an election. It has no precedence in American democracy. The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to know what the hell is going on. Chairman Lindsey Graham and I have discussed this at length and the Committee today will be noticing a markup on Tuesday to issue a subpoena to Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee next Friday, to come before this Committee and the American people and explain why Twitter is abusing their corporate power to silence the press and cover-up allegations of corruption," Cruz said.
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