When Meta reconsidered its content regulation norms amidst the clamor of ‘free speech’, it painted an open canvas for several other industry giants to rethink their restrictions. The spotlight then turned to another tech titan, Alphabet Inc., the parent organization of Google. On a memorable Thursday, Representative Jim Jordan issued a demand for Alphabet to disclose any instance wherein YouTube may have deleted content upon the Biden-Harris administration’s request. Jordan argued that such actions, if present, reflect Alphabet’s transformation into an agent of the federal government’s censorship drive.
Despite conservative stalwarts within the Republican Party expressing concerns over Big Tech’s inclination to control content moderation that alters the visibility of their posts, the campaign against technology titans gained further momentum post-2021. The key turning point was President Trump’s banishment from Twitter, subsequently renamed ‘X’, spawned by the events of January 6th. With this impetus, the conservative stand against Big Tech escalated dramatically.
Finding himself at the helm of the House Judiciary Committee in 2023, Representative Jordan leveraged his standing and power of subpoena to unearth concerning insights from the databases of Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Apple, among others. According to him, these massive tech conglomerates singled out conservative accounts on social media platforms, acting upon instructions from the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice, thereby indulging in an illegitimate suppression of free speech.
Although there has been considerable pushback, the endeavor has produced a stellar achievement. In May, a committee under Jordan’s leadership unveiled a revelatory document accusing President Joe Biden of consistently pressuring Meta to deselect numerous content from its platforms. Unsurprisingly for the numerous critics, this demonstrated just another instance of the Biden-Harris administration’s unsettling attempts to stifle free speech.
Reeling from the stern scrutiny and the subsequent revelation, Meta, which encompasses Facebook and Instagram under its large umbrella, tweeted an admission of its mistake. The company yielded under the loaded demands of the Biden-Harris administration, and compliance was surely not its proudest moment. Therefore, in an attempt to recover its reputation, it expressed its renewed commitment to uphold the sacred principle of free speech on its platforms, with a promise of policy overhauls.
However, the same behavior was conspicuously absent in Alphabet’s response. The towering tech entity, unlike Meta, failed to discard the shackles of the Biden administration’s draconian attempts at censorship. As critics would argue, it appears that sustaining their lucrative corner within the tech space trumps the principle of free speech for companies like Alphabet.
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