New York Times columnist David Brooks blasted attempts from the political Left to censor speech, saying that it was a “problem for democracy.”
Brooks made the remarks during a segment on Friday during “PBS NewsHour” when asked about a federal judge ruling this week that the Biden administration cannot communicate with social media companies about removing posts that contain misinformation.
“I do think we need — obviously, they need to pull stuff down,” he said. “There are 40,000 people at Google and Meta pulling stuff down. They’ve pulled over a billion things down. I don’t really trust Big Tech to be in charge of this, and I don’t, frankly, trust government in cahoots with Big Tech in private to be in charge of this.”
“There is a law in the Senate — or a bill in the Senate that would make the process more transparent, so outside sources can see if they’re being honest and fair in what they pull down,” he continued. “And that seems, to me, the best way forward. But it is a problem for democracy to have elites in Washington and elites in Silicon Valley making decisions about what’s out there. And so, that’s just something we just have to wrestle with.”
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The judge in the case did allow for some exceptions for Biden officials to have contact with social media companies, including informing them of posts involving “criminal activity or criminal conspiracies,” “national security threats, extortion, or other threats,” and crimes related to U.S. elections.
The lawsuit, filed by Missouri and Louisiana, accused the Biden administration of pushing social media companies to censor content related to the coronavirus pandemic. The states said in the lawsuit that the Biden administration’s actions were “the most egregious violations of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.”