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Bipartisan US lawmakers call for legislation to regulate Big Tech

In this file photo taken on December 18, 2020, an illustration picture taken in London shows the logos of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft displayed on a mobile phone and a laptop screen. (AFP photo)

US Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and Republican Representative Mike Gallagher have expressed their support for legislation to increase regulations on Big Tech, which is reportedly censoring the content and bending the rules in the Washington establishment’s favor to suppress narratives that it does not like.

Klobuchar, who has served as the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights, said on Sunday Big Tech is “so powerful” that even bipartisan legislation can vanish because big companies interfere.

The bipartisan bills are passed through the US Senate Judiciary Committee.

Klobuchar had called for an end-of-year bill to require Big Tech to pay news media outlets for the content they share out on their platforms, but she said Facebook and Google lobbied and block the legislation.

“We had such strong support for this bill, but these guys just make a few calls,” she said.

“Let’s just start facing the fact and stop pretending that they’re some little company in a garage,” Klobuchar said.

Gallagher said he is concerned that rescinding Section 230 could lead to greater censorship because social media platforms might proactively kick users off if they are afraid of facing lawsuits over their content, The Hill reported.

But, he added that the platforms’ algorithms need to be more transparent.

Gallagher said data portability should be mandated across platforms to allow people to take their network to any platform that has what they consider the best content moderation policies and transparency, the newspaper added.

He said he would like to speak with Klobuchar about her ideas for the best way for Congress to act on the issue.

Gallagher said Congress should work for consumer protection and try to communicate information about the terms of conditions that users must agree to for the platforms so they can understand them.

“When it comes to our kids, the government can’t raise your kids, can’t protect your kids for you. I have two young daughters. It’s my responsibility to raise them into healthy adults. But there are certain sensible things we can do in order to create a healthier social media ecosystem,” he said.

Last week, Twitter CEO Elon Musk revealed that all social media platforms work with the US government to censor content.

Musk released documents following his purchase of Twitter which showed that the social media platform conspired with the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and other US government agencies to suppress information on US elections, Ukraine, and COVID-19.

“*Every* social media company is engaged in heavy censorship, with significant involvement of and, at times, explicit direction of the government,” Musk tweeted, adding that “Google frequently makes links disappear, for example.”

Former US President Donald Trump has accused Twitter and Facebook of wanting to help Joe Biden’s campaign by enforcing policies that restrict users' ability to share a New York Post story that contained alleged details of Hunter Biden’s business dealings with a Ukrainian energy company, also saying the former vice president had met with an adviser of the company.

“Now, Big Tech — you see what’s going on with Big Tech? — is censoring these stories to try and get Biden out of this impossible jam. He’s in a big jam,” Trump said.

"He and his family are crooked and they were caught, they got caught," he added.

Pulitzer Prize-winner American investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald has revealed in an article that an axis of the CIA, Big Tech and the DNC-allied wing of the corporate media spread an absolute lie in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election to help Biden win the vote.

He wrote that “the CIA, Big Tech, the liberal wing of the corporate media and the Democratic Party” censored and suppressed “a series of major reports about then-presidential frontrunner Biden.


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