(Chris Parker, Headline USA) Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg confirmed during a bombshell interview with Joe Rogan last month that the federal government has pressured Facebook to censor and control certain content.
Now, Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., has introduced legislation barring the federal government from engaging in the unconstitutional behavior again, reported Just the News.
If passed, Clyde’s Free Speech Defense Act will make it illegal for federal officials to pressure Big Tech in censoring certain speech and promoting specific viewpoints.
“It prevents the federal government from partnering with other entities, with these third party groups, with these social media companies, because that is a violation of of our Constitution,” Clyde said during an interview. “This bill would prevent the federal government from labeling anything through a proxy entity such as a social media company as disinformation.”
“It would also give an opportunity for those people who have been harmed by it to take legal action.”
That could mean quite a few lawsuits against the federal government. Social media platforms have ramped up their censorship of conservatives in recent years, often with no legitimate basis.
There is evidence that some of that censorship might be resulting from federal pressure. Earlier this year, Facebook was caught allowing Islamic terrorist group ISIS to post propaganda while block conservative viewpoints.
A recently leaked email also revealed how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put pressure on Facebook to help control the COVID narrative. Employees were encouraged to censor information regrading the vaccine and children despite the CDC’s Sara Oliver admitting “The clinical trials were not powered to detect efficacy against severe disease in young children” before approving them for children.
And, there’s also Zuckerberg’s bombshell confession last month.
“There was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s going to be similar to that,” Zuckerberg said of the FBI’s directives.
It was soon after that Facebook began censoring verifiable information related to Hunter Biden’s now infamous laptop. And these are just the cases that we know about. Apparently, Clyde believes the problem is deep enough to merit a new law.
However, he doesn’t believe it stands much of a chance just yet; it will likely need the Republicans to win back Congress during the midterms.