Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley can't be the only liberal law professors who see what's going down, but they seem to be the only ones with the courage to call it out

Democrat lawmakers not to “backslide” on censorship

Jonathan Turley:

With the restoration of free speech protections on Twitter, panic has grown on the left that its control over social media could come to an end. Now, some of the greatest advocates of censorship in Congress are specifically warning Facebook not to follow Twitter in restoring free speech to its platform.

In a chilling letter from Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., André Carson, D-Ind., Kathy Castor, D-Fla., and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Facebook was given a not-so-subtle threat that reducing its infamous censorship system will invite congressional action. The letter to Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, is written on congressional stationery "as part of our ongoing oversight efforts."

With House Republicans pledging to investigate social media censorship when they take control in January, these four Democratic members are trying to force Facebook to "recommit" to censoring opposing views and to make election censorship policies permanent. Otherwise, they suggest, they may be forced to exercise oversight into any move by Facebook to "alter or rollback certain misinformation policies."

In addition to demanding that Facebook preserve its bans on figures like former President Donald Trump, they want Facebook to expand its censorship overall because "unlike other major social media platforms, Meta’s policies do not prohibit posts that make unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud."

This is not the first time that some members of Congress have not so subtly warned social media companies to expand the censorship of political and scientific views which they consider to be wrong.

In a November 2020 Senate hearing, then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized for censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story. But Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., warned that he and his Senate colleagues would not tolerate any "backsliding or retrenching" by "failing to take action against dangerous disinformation." 

Others, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have called on social media companies to use enlightened algorithms to "protect" people from their own "bad" choices. After all, as President Joe Biden asked, without censorship and wise editors, "How do people know the truth?"