WASHINGTON, D.C. – At today’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) pushed Big Tech CEOs Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Sundar Pichai of Google to provide more transparency to their content moderation practices.

“There is a pattern of subjective manipulation of the information that is available to people from your platforms. What has driven additional attention to this is the fact that more of a family’s functional life is now being conducted online. Because of this, more people are realizing that you are picking winners and losers,” said Senator Blackburn at the hearing. “Mr. Zuckerberg, years ago you said Facebook functioned more like a government than a company. You’re beginning to insert yourself into these issues of free speech.” 

Following her questions, Senator Blackburn spoke with Sohrab Ahmari of the New York Post and Sean Davis of The Federalist for an episode of Unmuted with Marsha. Both outlets have experienced censorship at the hands of Big Tech in recent weeks.

BACKGROUND

On October 14, the New York Post’s Twitter account was locked to limit the sharing of its story on Hunter Biden’s sketchy foreign business dealings. It remains locked today, and Twitter refuses to unlock it unless the Post deletes the story. 

As Mr. Ahmari pointed out: “It's now been nearly two weeks: Has the "fact-checking" process been completed? Have our stories been allowed to recirculate? Because in the interval, neither Joe nor Hunter Biden has disputed the authenticity of the e-mails or the ownership of the hard drive. In the interval, the director of national intelligence has ruled out that this story was Russian disinformation. In the interval, the FBI and Justice Department have also ruled out Russian disinformation. In the interval, a former business partner of Hunter and Jim Biden's (a Democratic-donating naval officer) has come forward, on the record, to confirm the authenticity of another key e-mail thread we exposed.”