"What makes the threat of political censorship so problematic is the lack of transparency, the invisibility, the ability for a handful of giant tech companies to decide if a particular speaker is disfavored," Cruz said in his opening remarks during Wednesday's contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "Stifling Free Speech: Technological Censorship and the Public Discourse."
Cruz said he'd consider charging "big tech" with antitrust violations or fraud or could remove the protection from liability provided by a decades-old federal law.
Conservatives have offered no evidence of systematic efforts to suppress political speech. The Silicon Valley tech companies say they strike a balance between users' rights to freely express themselves and keeping hate, abuse and misinformation off their platforms. They deny censorship of conservative voices but acknowledge they've made missteps in moderating content. They also concede that their staffers tend to be liberal.
