Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was forced to deliver a quick lesson on First Amendment basics to Fox Business Channel host Maria Bartiromo Wednesday.
After Donald Trump urged his followers to "go after Meta and Google" after both tech companies acknowledged moderating systems had unintentionally suppressed content related to the apparent assassination attempt against the former president, Bartiromo suggested switching to alternative platforms was not enough.
"But I mean, is that all you can do?" Bartiromo said. "You're an elected official. Can't you stop so-called free press from censoring information and do something to ensure that these companies are, in fact, living up to the letter of free press?"
The Kentucky Republican pointed out that tech companies had the lawful ability to censor or moderate the content that appears on their platforms.
"The First Amendment's very clear that Congress, government shall make no law restricting freedom of press or freedom of speech," Paul said. "It doesn't say private entity.
"The New York Times doesn't have to print my op-eds, neither does the Washington Post. They don't ever really print my opinion, they have a right to. It's the same way with social media. You can leave it, you can force them to expand their horizons if you vote with your dollars and go somewhere else, and so this is the way the marketplace works.
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"But if we set up a government entity to say to Google and to Facebook you have to publish this, my fear is that people who will populate that government entity making the speech decisions will be people who end up being people who don't like my opinion, either."
"I don't want the government involved or any kind of committee involved from government with choosing and enforcing free speech," Paul added, "because I think they'll just enforce another rule on speech that I'm not particularly in favor of."
Bartiromo continued pushing, asking whether Congress could pressure tech companies to publish accurate information from all points of view.
"What about taking away their freedom of liability for anything, what about that?" she said. "Is there nothing you can do as an elected official to try to make sure these companies are reporting truth?"
The senator said social media companies needed to be shielded from liability for most user content and over their decisions to moderate content.
"If you let people sue Facebook because someone said they don't like someone else on their Facebook post, it's going to destroy the internet, so liability protections is important for the internet to work," Paul said.
"I don't like the left-wing politics, I oppose them. I speak out, I boycott these people. I don't want the government involved with breaking up big tech. If you break up our big tech, guess who takes over? China's big tech. I'm not for breaking up American big tech."
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