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I hope you saw my latest weekly column.



ROGER WICKER: Twitter Files Reveal Systemic Bias Against Conservatives
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The release of the Twitter Files will go down as a defining moment in the
history of Big Tech. These internal files, aired in recent weeks with the
permission of Twitter’s new CEO Elon Musk, confirm Twitter’s long history of
bias against conservatives. The documents show that Twitter used “shadow bans”
to suppress content they disagreed with, created double-standards for
conservative users, and invented a pretext to suspend Donald Trump’s account
while he was still President. These explosive revelations show the enormous
power that a handful of liberal tech executives have over our public discourse.



We should be grateful that new leadership is lifting the hood on Twitter, but
Congress needs to follow up with wider investigations into Big Tech companies,
including Facebook and Google. Americans deserve to know the full extent of
tech bias and corruption that is impacting our country.



Left-Wing Groupthink Leads to Censorship



Much of the rot at Big Tech companies comes from the sheer lack of viewpoint
diversity among their staff. These companies are overwhelmingly left-wing.
During the midterm elections, for example, more than 99 percent of all
political donations from Twitter employees went to Democrats. This extreme
one-sidedness is reflected in people like Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former “Head of
Trust and Safety,” who censored theNew York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden
and likened members of the Trump Administration to Nazis. These Silicon Valley
executives are out of touch with the rest of the country and are inclined to
treat dissent as a form of heresy, often accusing conservatives of “hate
speech.” It is not hard to see how this rigid groupthink led to bias against
conservatives, which continued through much of 2022.



Earlier this year, the popular Christian satire site The Babylon Bee was
suspended from Twitter for making a joke about transgenderism. A government
official from Spain was locked out of his account for pointing out that “a man
cannot get pregnant.” A Missouri Congresswoman, Vicky Hartzler, was suspended
after she tweeted: “Women’s sports are for women, not men pretending to be
women,” a comment that supposedly violated Twitter’s policy against “hateful
content.” And as we now know from the Twitter Files, Stanford professor Dr. Jay
Bhattachayra was shadow-banned on the platform simply for raising doubts about
COVID policies. Meanwhile, Twitter never lifted a finger to suspend left-wing
accounts associated with Antifa, a domestic terror group, or world leaders who
openly threaten violence.



Time to Investigate Big Tech



We live in a big country where people hold a wide range of views and
convictions. This diversity makes it all the more vital that we protect free
speech. Big Tech has shown that it cannot be trusted to do so. Congress now has
an obligation to act on behalf of the American people and bring transparency
and accountability to these public platforms.



Some lawmakers have been fearful of investigating these companies, citing the
fact that they are free enterprises operating in a free market. What this fails
to recognize is that these massive companies wield unprecedented power over our
nation. Google’s search algorithms determine what information we can find
online. Facebook sells personal data to other companies, essentially turning
millions of Americans into products. And decisions made by Twitter almost
certainly affected the outcome of the 2020 election. All the while, these
companies continue to enjoy special protections under the law that other
businesses do not have. Congress needs to roll back those special carve-outs,
as I sought to do withlegislation
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when I led the Senate Commerce Committee. I look forward to supporting more of
these efforts in 2023.



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Thank you for your support,

Senator Roger Wicker






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