Why Are Senate Democrats Helping Move Forward Trump's Strategy Of Attacking The Internet?
We've detailed for a while now how both Republicans and Democrats are mad online about how the internet works -- though often for reasons that directly conflict with each other. We've also highlighted how Donald Trump and his administration are actively encouraging Republicans to focus all of their legislative and grandstanding firepower on attacking the internet.
What I cannot understand is... why are the Democrats helping?
In a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Thursday, Democrats initially seemed to recognize that plans to subpoena various internet CEOs (AGAIN) were little more than a dog and pony show for Republicans working on their Trump-directed culture war against the internet. Senators Cantwell and Blumenthal both stated that they knew this was all a grandstanding ruse to pressure social media companies to leave up their misinformation and propaganda:
Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Democrat on Wicker's panel, said she resisted his initial subpoena request over fears that such a move would chill the companies' efforts to tackle lies, harassment and intimidation" ahead of the election.
I am not interested in using our subpoena power to try to play or game the refs days before an election, which is clearly what Republicans are doing," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said this week. The timing shows that these subpoenas are clearly calculated to chill efforts to get misinformation or falsehoods from abroad or domestic groups [removed]."
But take a wild guess what came next? You got it. They ended up supporting the subpoenas unanimously. Why? Because Republicans told the Democrats that while everything they feared about this nonsense was true, the Democrats can also grandstand over their own bullshit misleading culture war issues. It's a win-win for politicians on both sides of the aisle and a lose-lose for the public and the internet we rely on. I mean come on:
Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the panel, urged caution amid her colleagues' complaints of anti-conservative bias. Last week, as Wicker had been pushing internally for the subpoenas, Cantwell said she feared Republicans sought to "chill the efforts of these companies to remove lies, harassment, and intimidation from their platforms."
On Thursday, Cantwell said she was pleased to move forward with the subpoenas after Wicker agreed to include the topics of Big Tech's impact on media and privacy as issues of concern.
"What I don't want to see is a chilling effect on individuals who are in a process of trying to crack down on hate speech or misinformation about Covid during a pandemic," she said at Thursday's markup.
Neither party seems interested in dealing with real problems. Both parties seem to want to waste time focusing on the internet rather than any of the actual problems facing the country and the world these days. What a waste.