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Floor Speech
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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I will be brief. But I do want to talk about a serious subject. You know, 30 years ago, we wouldn't have been talking about email or social media or other things that we now rely on to receive communications, to be informed on political choices, and to potentially even support candidates that we want to support. But the reality is, today, we all have two or three email accounts, probably most of them based on Gmail. We have got access to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook--a number of social media platforms. And I have a concern that maybe it is not a level playing field for political views.
We have always had that argument, but recently NC State issued a report that seems to find that--particularly with Gmail--we have an imbalance between how information is disseminated, how candidates are able to reach out for support. What the study found is a potential political bias against Republicans in favor of Democratic candidates.
Now, I am a technology person, and I think my staff called me a bit of a nerd. I have been in technology for almost 40 years. I am not willing to jump to the conclusion that Google has necessarily created a strategy for benefitting Democrats over Republicans, but a study seems to suggest that there are legitimate questions that need to be answered.
I, for one, don't think any platform should favor either policy. I think more speech, more access is better; more informed voters, more people participating in elections. But the study seems to suggest that there is a bias in the way that we receive our information through Gmail.
I joined a letter with Senator Daines to say: Take a look at that report, take a look at your operations, and give us your response to the assertions in the report.
I know that this is very important for the future of elections, for the future of participation in elections. And, again, I don't want a platform that biases itself toward conservatives any more than I want one that biases itself towards liberals. But I did have an opportunity to talk with technologists at Google, who dismissed the report. But that is not enough. The report has findings. And I think--in this case Google, but there are other platforms we can ask the same question.
Incidentally, Twitter 2 months ago informed me that I was not who I said I was, so they suspended my account. I tried to go through an appeal process and finally just decided I don't need that Twitter account. I am wondering if that was a result of an algorithm or the result of somebody in Twitter who didn't like what I had to say about my mother and my wife and my kids on my Twitter account because I happen to have an official account that, for some reason, it is OK.
We have got to get this straightened up, and Google can help us start by taking a look at the findings in this report and providing us hard answers for it and identifying others who may actually be responsible for the outcomes that we are, at this point, assuming are the responsibility of Google.
I think it is very important for us to go through the report, give us the information we need because we may find out that Google is, in fact, not responsible for what some of my colleagues believe is the vast majority of appeals from conservatives going into their spam filter and never being reached. There may be other reasons. We already know that Russia, China, other state actors influence public opinion in the United States through their views and exploitation of social platforms.
So the reason I come to the floor today is to basically reassert what I did in the letter to Google. Do the homework. Prove to us that there are no operations or conscious decisions made by the management or individuals in the organization to actually bias towards one ideology or the other. I need that information so that we can figure out how we can have more speech and more engagement in the political process.
But I will say this: If there is any social media platform that has an employee or an organization that is biased, those folks should no longer be working for those platforms. And if I find any evidence to that effect, I will be pursuing it aggressively. But I come to the floor to encourage Google to do the homework, know that I will be objective. And I would like to get a response soon.
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