Facebook and Twitter are engaging in "deceptive trade practices" with their claims of being politically unbiased while they continue to suppress conservative voices, Sen. Mike Lee said before Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
“They’re claiming that they’re politically unbiased, that they’re not putting their thumb on the scale between one side of the political spectrum and the other, and so they lure their customers in thinking they’ll have an unbiased experience,” the Utah Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
However, this should not be how it works, Lee said.
"What they are doing is steadily putting their thumb on the left side of the scale," said Lee. "Now, that’s a problem. That’s a deceptive trade practice, and they need to be held accountable for that. I predict that they will be.”
Instead, Lee said he wants social media sites to offer the services they claim to be offering.
"When their customers get on one of these platforms, they expect to get both sides," said Lee. "They expect both sides will be treated fairly, and that’s not what is happening."
Dorsey and Zuckerberg both defended their companies' handling of U.S. election misinformation during the congressional hearing, which came under increased fire from both Republicans and Democrats about how they handled political content during the presidential campaign.
Lee, during the hearing, denounced the "instances in which your platforms are taking a very distinctively partisan approach and not a neutral one to election-related content moderation ... just days before the election."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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