Republicans blast big tech during congressional hearing for conservative censorship
Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., says despite the big tech CEOs claiming they don't censor conservative voices online, he continues to see liberal viewpoints promoted on their sites and he believes that impacts elections.
Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., lambasted Big Tech companies -- specifically Google -- Wednesday, saying they "censor" and "discriminate" against conservatives and calling for changes to legislation protecting them.
"They absolutely censor conservatives and they promote on their website liberal viewpoints and they absolutely affect the outcome of elections," Buck said of the search giant on Fox Business Network's "The Evening Edit." "And they can't just excuse this as some minor glitch or some mistake by an individual.
"It is part of the algorithm. It is part of their company culture. And frankly ... if they didn't have such a dominant position in the marketplace ... their activities wouldn't exist."
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Google and Apple's Tim Cook testified before the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Wednesday, each claiming that they face competition not only from one another, but other large companies inside and outside the country as well.
Republican lawmakers pressed the tech leaders on bias, with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, declaring that "big tech is out to get conservatives."
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"They are and they should be regulated because they are monopolies and their anti-competitive actions should be regulated," Buck said. "When Congress wrote these laws that affected the Internet, they wrote laws that exempted these companies from certain libel actions. It's called Section 230 [of the 1996 Commuications Decency Act] and Section 230 needs to be amended to make sure that Congress doesn't allow the kind of bias that is currently going on."
In addition, the congressman said that Americans "need to understand that when they use this search engine or when they use this social interaction platform, that they are getting biased information and they need to take that into account."
Fox News' Chris Ciaccia and Andrew O'Reilly contributed to this report.
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