Speaking on Fox News’s “Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) discussed Twitter violating the First Amendment, citing a report Twitter’s CEO Elon Musk released on Friday (December 2).
Musk sent a report detailing the collaboration between Twitter employees and U.S. lawmakers on Friday to Substack journalist Matt Taibbi.
The documents show that Twitter employees had internal collaborations with lawmakers and political officials regarding tweets deemed problematic.
Some of the tweets suppressed as a result of this collaboration include The New York Post’s exposé on Hunter Biden’s laptop, which Twitter suppressed days before the 2020 general election at the behest of then-Democratic-Presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign.
Speaking to host Ted Growdy, Buck shared his belief that the suppression of such tweets proved Twitter’s “bias against conservatives.”
Buck noted that the report was proof Twitter “favored liberals” and used “content moderation… to hurt Republicans during elections.”
Buck described the move as “dangerous.”
Despite the report showing some collaboration with conservative lawmakers, Twitter conducted the most collaboration with those with liberal views, which Buck argued proves “institutional biases.”
Liberal commentators disagree with the assertion Twitter violated the First Amendment, saying that as a private company, that wasn’t possible.
Yet, Buck argues, as a private company, Twitter can violate the First Amendment when it “supplants the government function.”
He explained that if the government could contact Twitter or any social media platform to do something the government can’t do due to it violating the First Amendment, a “company can’t act that way.”
Buck floated the idea of ensuring competition for companies like Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and Apple to ensure there is a “lot less concern about any type of entanglement.”
