Democrats seek to empower Big Tech to spy on Trump supporters and conservatives by falsely classifying them as “extremists”

Conservative Americans who identify as such or who supported former President Donald Trump are in for a rough two-to-four years depending on whether the Republican Party a) can collectively grow a spine, and b) start behaving like the Party of Trump, because Democrats are coming for them.

Newly empowered after stealing Trump’s reelection victory, which we now know for certain actually happened, the Marxist Party is preparing full-on to take away all political power from conservatives and erase them from the culture under the color of law.

As reported by The Epoch Times, Democratic senators have introduced new legislation amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that would require Big Tech platforms to spy on users and then report ‘extremist activity’ to federal nannies: 

Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on Feb. 5 introduced the Safeguarding Against Fraud, Exploitation, Threats, Extremism and Consumer Harms (SAFE TECH) Act to reform Section 230 and “allow social media companies to be held accountable for enabling cyber-stalking, targeted harassment, and discrimination on their platforms.”

The Democrats’ proposal creates a series of carve-outs to Section 230 protections, including by making the liability shield inapplicable to ads or other paid content, to instances where content and services delivered via the platforms are discriminatory, “likely to cause irreparable harm,” “may have directly contributed to a loss of life,” or where they “directly enable harmful activity.”

“Section 230 has provided a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card to the largest platform companies even as their sites are used by scam artists, harassers, and violent extremists to cause damage and injury,” Warner said in a statement. 

Passed in 1996 as the internet was becoming a thing, Sect. 230 sought to allow online platforms to develop without having to worry about being sued over content that users posted. It also gave the developing platforms leeway to remove content — to censor, like a publisher, but without having to worry about the same liabilities as a publisher. 

Democrats want the platforms to ban more speech — especially conservative pro-Trump speech; Republicans generally want platforms to stop censoring people just because they don’t like their political, cultural or social positions and views on issues. (Related: Situation Update, Feb. 8th – A philosophical framework for human freedom.)

“It’s obvious that [Section] 230 we’ll look at,” House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson said in a warning to Big Tech to become more Stalinesque in their operations. “If the companies don’t assume the interest in policing their own platforms, then you leave government no choice.”

In the days following the Jan. 6 riot, which was preplanned and had nothing to do with former President Trump’s speech, the Big Tech platforms banned him anyway, leading top Republicans to double down on their efforts to get rid of their Sect. 230 protections. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) proclaimed he was “more determined” that ever to curtail liability protections for big tech companies after Trump was banned.

“Twitter may ban me for this but I willingly accept that fate: Your decision to permanently ban President Trump is a serious mistake,” Graham said on Twitter. “The Ayatollah can tweet, but Trump can’t. Says a lot about the people who run Twitter.

“I’m more determined than ever to strip Section 230 protections from Big Tech (Twitter) that let them be immune from lawsuits,” he added.

Some Democrats are balking at the reforming Section 230 including Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, one of the provision’s original authors.

“Unfortunately, as written, it would devastate every part of the open internet, and cause massive collateral damage to online speech,” Wyden said recently.

Here’s the thing: Democrats have already shown a penchant to favor censoring Trump and anyone who backs him. This new bill is about achieving more of that under the guise of ‘stopping extremism.’

We should never let would-be tyrants define the issue or debate when it comes to our liberties.

See more reporting like this at Tyranny.news.

Sources include:

TheEpochTimes.com

NewsTarget.com