Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Relating to ``Community Reinvestment Act Regulations''--motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that there is a small but very loud sector of the American people who are willing to condition their tolerance for diverging viewpoints on how they feel, they themselves feel about what is being said, worshipped, or reported. And as scary and as frightening as that attitude is to many of us, it is increasingly reflected in the very companies that have the most influence over how we access and consume information.

Last week, we saw two of these companies go to extremes to get in line with radicals who are trying to block, censor, and intimidate their way into power. We all know the companies and the controversy I am talking about. Twitter and Facebook censored the spread of a New York Post article containing allegations that could potentially affect the outcome of the upcoming election.

That is all I am going to say about the article itself because, frankly, the content bears no importance on how anyone should react to what happened after it was posted. Someone working for a private company--someone who is a content reviewer or content moderator-- someone working for a private company made a unilateral decision to stop Americans from reading the article. They didn't like it. They said: I have the power to stop it, and because I have that power, I am going to stop it.

Now that is precisely what happened, and I will tell you, colleagues, it is not just that they blocked the link and the text of the article, it is that at least in Twitter's case, they suspended the Trump campaign's account; they suspended the New York Post account; they locked the White House Press Secretary's account; and they suppressed information posted by the House Judiciary Committee Republicans. They couldn't even provide a plausible explanation for why they did this. Think about that.

They made themselves the arbiters of free speech, and they, in their almighty position, decided they were going to determine what you could hear, when you could hear it, and how you could hear it. They decided.

The common element, of course, in all of this action that took place was the New York Post story. Was it information or hacked information or just inconvenient information? No one seems to want to answer that question. Why do they not want to answer that question? It is because they didn't like the information. It did not suit their narrative, but the way things stand, they didn't have to, because there is no real accountability and now their weak explanations have been co-opted into arguments made by activists, rival media organizations, and even journalists who were insisting that the information is harmful and must be stricken from the record.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. BLACKBURN. I would be happy to yield to the Democratic leader.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I have to tell you, listening to the Democratic leader there, this is one of the things that social media has taken off on.

They lost. They lost the 2016 Presidential election, and they have never accepted the results. Never. It doesn't fit their narrative. So what do they do? Look at this. Let's just not even work. Let's just adjourn. Let's not do our constitutional duty.

I tell you what, you can't make this stuff up. You really can't. Cognitive dissonance of this moment in history has overwhelmed the discourse.

It is important to make it abundantly clear that the outrage--the absolute outrage from the American people over this incident with social media has everything to do with their very fluid and subjective standards that these companies use to control the flow of information, and over the last few years, they have gotten worse about it. And you know what? They do it until we slap their hands and then pull them back in, and we say: You can't do this.

Now, in the case that we are discussing that happened last week, it looks suspiciously like they applied a brandnew set of standards because someone got spooked at the prospect of losing momentum on a political narrative.

They are all working together on this. So let's go home; let's not work; let's not do our job; let's bury a story on social media. Why? Their gal didn't win in 2016, and Donald Trump did because the American people said: We are with him, not her.

Now, here in Washington we can argue all over election-year politics, but in Tennessee, the people are seeing this for what it is, and they are not talking about politics. They think this is pretty terrifying. They are seeing a news platform censor the news, and they are seeing extremely powerful people cheer it on. To them and to me, that is frightening.

They are looking to us to get into one of those policy debates my colleagues across the aisle were so eager to jump into just last week during Judge Barrett's confirmation hearing.

Fortunately, for them, we have got a head start on that discussion. Big Tech has spent the last several years building up a body of evidence against its own intentions, and if we don't address their growing influence, we will lose our ability to create responsive policy.

I have already come to the floor several times to speak on various ways we are doing this--through legislation, antitrust investigations, and some good old-fashioned committee hearings. Congress doing its job, precisely why we ought not to adjourn, precisely why we should stay here and do our work.

On October 28, the Commerce Committee will host a few familiar faces for a hearing where we will analyze the effect that the liability shield found in section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has on Big Tech's behavior. Over the course of the hearing, we will speak with Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai of Google about their approach to using the section 230 shield.

We will also examine various legislative proposals to modernize section 230, including one of my own that would resolve some ambiguities regarding what sorts of content moderation policies are shielded from liability and which ones aren't protected. We are going to talk about the unintended consequences that stem from these policies. We are going to talk about their platforms' interaction with activists and with the media.

I think we will probably get around to talking about it, whether they like it or not, because we have the bipartisan and unanimously authorized subpoenas in hand to do it, and those subpoenas are good through the end of this Congress.

Hopefully, by going straight to the top, we will gain a better understanding of why these companies can't seem to regulate themselves, why they can't seem to stop themselves from having a complete meltdown every single time we turn up the heat and talk about these issues of privacy, talk about censorship, talk about prioritization, talk about preferencing, talk about holding them accountable for the spectrum they use to put out their message and the activity that they are taking now to censor the free speech of the American public.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source