Why Conservatives Allege Big Tech Is Muzzling Them
Learning to distinguish evidence from nonsense is a core goal of both a liberal and a legal education in America. Ted Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, has a bachelor of arts degree in public policy from Princeton University. He graduated from Harvard Law School. He has worked as a successful litigator. At some point along the way, Cruz learned how to decide which ideas are baseless.
Like many loud voices in his party, Cruz has suspended that habit of evidentiary discrimination in recent years. Earlier this month, he and a fellow Republican senator, Josh Hawley of Missouri, urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Twitter, Facebook, and Google for alleged anti-conservative bias in content-moderation practices and the ways algorithms prioritize some types of content over others.
At after congressional hearing, speech after after , we have heard a steady, coordinated chorus of complaints about conservative bias on these platforms. As serious policy makers wrestle with the complex challenges that Big Tech poses—in areas such as disinformation, Russian propaganda, antitrust, and privacy—Cruz, Hawley, and others on the right keep insinuating that platforms are somehow suppressing conservative views.
