Marco Rubio, Rick Scott laud social media crackdown

Is Big Tech putting its outsized thumbs on the scale when it comes to the Presidential election?

Republicans contend that is in fact the case, including Florida’s pair of GOP U.S. Senators, each of whom issued statements in favor of more scrutiny for Twitter and Facebook.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said the agency was going to look into rulemaking to “clarify the meaning” of Section 230, which currently allows Facebook and Twitter to be given legal immunity from consequences for what is broadcast on what have historically been open source forums.

But with the decision by Facebook to limit distribution of a NY Post article contending that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden haven’t separated state and personal business as well as they could have, and Twitter’s decision to restrict the distribution of the article, both Rubio and Scott emphasized Friday morning that some serious reexamination of that part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act is in order.

“This is long overdue. As I wrote yesterday, the egregious instances of censorship & partisan content moderation by social media companies like Twitter and Facebook are brazen attempts to twist & manipulate America’s public square,” Rubio tweeted Friday morning.

Rubio, who has been urging for months for the feds to take a fresh look at Section 230 in light of social media companies, contends the “once nascent, scrappy internet companies that benefited from the protections afforded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act have become Goliaths intent on twisting and manipulating America’s public square to their liking,”

“The New York Post censorship saga is only the latest example of this consistent effort by Silicon Valley giants. Twenty days before the presidential election, it is also one of the most egregious,” Rubio added.

Senator Rick Scott agrees.

On Friday he tweeted that he was “glad to see” the FCC “addressing this issue,” and looked forward to the October 28 Senate Commerce Committee meeting, where tech CEOs would be under oath discussing these matters.