Democrats Demand Big Tech Censor Americans Ahead Of Election

A group of Democrat senators is demanding Big Tech embark on a massive censorship campaign to ensure Americans’ speech is neutered ahead of the upcoming presidential election.

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., led the charge in asking “11 of the largest and most popular social media and encrypted chat companies in the U.S. calling for increased resources toward combatting 2024 U.S. election administration and certification disinformation.” He was joined by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.

The group of Democrats sent a letter to Google, Meta, TikTok, X, Reddit, Snapchat, Amazon, Discord, Signal, Telegram, and Apple demanding information on how the companies plan to “de-amplify and/or remove election disinformation (whether created using AI or not) and/or user accounts who spread this disinformation, when in violation of their policies,” according to a press release.

They also want major platforms to amplify what they deem to be “official election information” and “increase their “2024 election safety team” and ensure it spans the ten most commonly spoken languages on the platforms.

“Senate Democrats are once again colluding with Big Tech to shut down opposing viewpoints, spread disinformation, and conduct election interference, as we know they did during COVID and with Hunter Biden’s laptop,” Heritage Action for America Executive Vice President Ryan Walker told The Federalist in a statement. “It’s sad — but not surprising — that Democrats would rather restrict information and free speech than defend their ideas and lies publicly. Americans should keep this in mind when they make their voices heard at the ballot box in November, where — to Democrats’ dismay — they can’t be censored.”

Recently, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta — which runs Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram, admitted his platforms were used to help censor Covid information and interfere in the 2020 election.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee. “Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.”

“I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he added. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

“We’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” Zuckerberg concluded.

As The Federalist has extensively reported, Big Tech has already shown willingness to work with multiple federal agencies in order to undermine Americans’ free speech. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), often called the “nerve center” of the federal censorship regime, was at the forefront of silencing Americans in 2020 and, as a House of Representatives report found, “colluded with big tech and ‘disinformation’ partners to censor Americans.”

Meanwhile, the State Department refused to tell The Federalist if it planned to quash Americans’ speech this election, but also has a history of colluding with Big Tech. It has used its Global Engagement Center to fund the development of censorship tools aimed primarily at conservatives and has deployed “‘government employees to act as sales reps pitching … censorship products to Big Tech.’”

If Big Tech chooses not to censor Americans, the left-wing senators say it “will suppress voter participation, sow doubt in U.S. election processes and incite political violence.”

“Once again, liberal politicians are trying to get private companies to do what government cannot: censor the speech of American citizens,” Jason Snead, executive director of Honest Elections Project Action, told The Federalist. “Liberal politicians routinely accuse their opponents of spreading disinformation merely by supporting voter ID laws or pointing out that noncitizens are able to vote. Genuine disinformation is a clear concern, but this letter is nothing more than a naked attempt to get big tech to ban speech these senators disagree with.”

For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.

Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.