During a US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing titled “Foreign Threats to Elections in 2024 – Roles and Responsibilities of U.S. Tech Providers,” several senators urged Big Tech executives to increase their censorship of foreign “disinformation” and share more information with the federal government.
While the senators pushing these measures insisted that such efforts would be focused on foreign adversaries who are creating inauthentic content, previous incidents, most notably the censorship of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story, have shown that measures claiming to combat foreign disinformation often result in the speech of Americans being censored.
In his opening statement, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) told the witnesses, Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) President and Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker, that he hoped the hearing would result in greater information between Big Tech and government.
“Our committee’s bipartisan efforts also…resulted in a set of recommendations for government, for the private sector, and for political…campaigns,” Warner said. “Recommendations for which I hope today’s hearing will serve as a status check. These recommendations included greater information sharing between the US government and the private sector…about foreign malicious activity. Not domestic, foreign malicious activity.” […]
— Read More: reclaimthenet.org
