BY DONALD TRUMP JR., OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
\nThe Hill<\/p>\n
As Big Tech\u2019s censorship of conservatives becomes ever more flagrant and overt, the old arguments about protecting the sanctity of the modern public square are now invalid. Our right to freely engage in public discourse through speech is under sustained attack, necessitating a vigorous defense against the major social media and internet platforms.<\/p>\n
From \u201cshadowbans\u201d on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter<\/a>, to\u00a0demonetization of YouTube videos<\/a>, to\u00a0pulled<\/a>\u00a0ads for Republican candidates at the critical junctures of election campaigns, the list of\u00a0violations against the online practices and speech of conservatives<\/a>\u00a0is long.<\/p>\n I certainly had my suspicions confirmed when Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, \u201caccidentally\u201d\u00a0censored\u00a0<\/a>a post I made regarding the Jussie Smollett hoax, which consequently led to me hearing from hundreds of my followers about how they’ve been having problems seeing, liking or being able to interact with my posts. Many of them even claimed that they’ve had to repeatedly refollow me, as Instagram keeps unfollowing me on their accounts.<\/p>\n While nothing about Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives truly surprises me anymore, it’s still chilling to see the proof for yourself. If it can happen to me, the son of the president, with millions of followers on social media, just think about how bad it must be for conservatives with smaller followings and those who don’t have the soapbox or media reach to push back when they’re being targeted?<\/p>\n Thanks to a brave Facebook whistleblower who\u00a0approached<\/a>\u00a0James O\u2019Keefe\u2019s Project Veritas, we now know that\u00a0Mark Zuckerberg<\/a><\/span>\u2019s social media giant developed algorithms to \u201cdeboost\u201d certain content, limiting its distribution and appearance in news feeds. As you probably guessed, this stealth censorship was specifically aimed at conservatives.<\/p>\n Facebook appears to have deliberately\u00a0tailored<\/a>\u00a0its algorithm to recognize the syntax and style popular among conservatives in order to \u201cdeboost\u201d that content. \u201cMainstream media,\u201d \u201cSJW” (Social Justice Warrior) and \u201cred pill\u201d \u2014 all terms that conservatives often use to express themselves \u2014 were listed as red flags, according to the former Facebook insider.<\/p>\n Facebook engineers even cited BlazeTV host Lauren Chen\u2019s video criticizing the social justice movement as an example of the kind of \u201cred pills\u201d that users just aren\u2019t allowed to drop anymore. Mainstream conservative content was\u00a0strangled<\/a>\u00a0in real time, yet fringe leftists such as the Young Turks enjoy free rein on the social media platform.<\/p>\n Despite the occasional\u00a0brave gesture<\/a>, politicians have been far too sluggish in recognizing the extent of the problem. But the Republican Party and the conservative movement are becoming more vigilant against the suppression of our speech, as we saw at last weekend\u2019s\u00a0Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)<\/a>.<\/p>\n Silicon Valley lobbyists have splashed\u00a0millions of dollars<\/a>\u00a0all over the Washington swamp to play on conservatives\u2019 innate faith in the free-market system and respect for private property. Even as Big Tech companies work to exclude us from the town square of the 21st century, they\u2019ve been able to rely on misguided conservatives to\u00a0carry water<\/a>\u00a0for them with irrelevant pedantry about whether the First Amendment\u00a0applies<\/a>\u00a0in cases of social media censorship.<\/p>\n Sen.\u00a0Josh Hawley<\/a><\/span>\u00a0(R-Mo.) has been\u00a0making<\/a>\u00a0a name for himself as a Republican prepared to stand up to Big Tech malfeasance since his time as Missouri\u2019s attorney general. He\u00a0delivered<\/a>\u00a0a tour de force interview with The Wall Street Journal\u2019s Kimberly Strassel in front of the CPAC crowd, one that provided a clear-eyed assessment of the ongoing affront to the freedoms of conservative speech and expression.<\/p>\n Hawley demolished the absurd notion that \u201cconservative principles\u201d preclude taking action to ensure free debate online simply because Big Tech firms \u2014 the most powerful corporations in the world \u2014 are private companies.<\/p>\n Hawley pointed out that Big Tech companies already enjoy \u201csweetheart deals\u201d under current regulations that make their malfeasance a matter of public concern. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, for instance, allows them to avoid liability for the content that users post to their platforms. To address this problem, Hawley proposed adding a viewpoint neutrality requirement for platforms that benefit from Section 230\u2019s protections, which were originally\u00a0enacted<\/a>\u00a0to protect the internet as \u201ca forum for a true diversity of political discourse.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGoogle and Facebook should not be a law unto themselves,\u201d Hawley declared. \u201cThey should not be able to discriminate against conservatives. They should not be able to tell us we need to sit down and shut up!\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s high time other conservative politicians started heeding Hawley\u2019s warnings, because the logical endpoint of Big Tech\u2019s free rein is far more troubling than conservative meme warriors losing their Twitter accounts. As we\u2019re already\u00a0starting to see<\/a>, what starts with social media censorship can quickly lead to banishment from such fundamental services as transportation, online payments and banking.<\/p>\n Left unchecked, Big Tech and liberal activists could construct a private \u201csocial credit\u201d system \u2014 not unlike what the communists have nightmarishly\u00a0implemented<\/a>\u00a0in China \u2014 that excludes outspoken conservatives from wide swaths of American life simply because their political views differ from those of tech executives.<\/p>\n There is no conservative principle that even remotely suggests we are obligated to adopt a laissez-faire attitude while the richest companies on earth abuse the power we give them to put a thumb on the scale for our political enemies.<\/p>\n If anything, our love of the free market dictates that we must do whatever is necessary to ensure that the free marketplace of ideas remains open to all.<\/p>\n