Big Tech in big fight with GOP
Twitter’s ban on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) personal account is fueling Republican attacks against “Big Tech” and the nation’s dominant social media platforms.
Former President Trump, who was banned himself from Twitter a year ago, and several of Greene’s GOP House colleagues have blasted the company for removing the congresswoman's personal account over violating COVID-19 misinformation policies.
In some ways it is unsurprising that Twitter’s ban on Greene provoked a loud response from the GOP.
A number of Republicans, including Greene, have seen the fight against social media companies as a galvanizing issue for their constituents since Trump was kicked off Twitter in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
In addition, the ban on Greene was seen as a significant step.
Greene’s ban sets a “more far-reaching precedent” than the one imposed on Trump last year, since he was already on his way out of office at the time, said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation.
“The fact that Twitter cut her off, despite being an elected official, is a substantial change in the broad latitude that elected officials have had in the past,” West added.
Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab, said he agreed that Greene’s ban sets a more significant precedent.
“This is obviously not a decision that was made lightly,” he said.
Greene’s account had been suspended four times before, and in line with Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policy, her fifth strike triggered a permanent ban.
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Bid Tech has a flawed and biased "misinformation" policy. They blocked an accurate report of the Biden family corruption based on Hunter's laptop he left at a repair shop. This suppression of accurate information as "misinformation" led to Biden's victory and voters polled about it after the election say they would have changed their votes if they had known about the corruption. Big Tech is also accused of leaving up misinformation by Democrats. This bias makes their actions against MTG look like political bias instead of concern about misinformation.
See, also:
Social media employees should not be arbiters of truth
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