Republican Senators Turn Up Heat on Twitter After Fact-Checks
And while Republican senators may seek consequences for Twitter’s decision to fact-check the president, there are major ideological disagreements among conservatives about whether the government should be in the business of deciding how technology companies run their platforms. “It’s honestly fairly contrary to Republican conservative principles,” said Charles Duan, director of technology and innovation policy at the free market think tank R Street Institute. “The idea that the government should engage in regulation of private companies in order to limit what they are able to do with their free speech rights is pretty remarkable to me.”
But Republican voters are animated by the idea that social media companies are trying to censor their point of view, he said. “As a practical matter I understand what they’re going for, it’s something that does bring a certain class of the electorate together.”
Duan said the federal government has tried to create its own forms of social networks, including an online petition portal, and has ended up censoring objectionable content aggressively. Meanwhile, conservatives have long opposed legislation like the Fairness Doctrine, that has attempted to force companies to behave with political neutrality. When that legislation was repealed in 1987, it allowed for the proliferation of right-wing talk radio.
